jaw ngo consultant

Rina Kunisawa, 33
NGO Consultant

What led you to development work?
I was really interested in social issues since I was a child. I was interested in social issues, not only global development issues. As a Business major at Kobe Shobai Daigaku I was more interested in club activities than development issues. After traveling to the United States I enrolled in the Master Program at Osaka University, the School of International Public Policy.

You were in China?
For three years. At first with the Chinese Academic Social Sciences. I went out in the field, meeting people. Then I encountered Planet Finance. They were trying to open an office in China, so I helped. We provided technical assistance, like IT, to local microcredit organizations. We tried to find out the needs and evaluate the projects and give the organization what they really needed—not what we thought they need. It was helpful for them.

What are the plans for Planet Finance now?
We found one big donor, a big Japanese company, so we’re going to start an office, to raise awareness of microcredit in Japan. The second is fundraising for projects outside Japan, especially in Asia. We train trainers, disseminate information, and rate and fund microcredit projects

I meet company representatives, executives, to talk about microcredit and corporate responsibility. My other work is writing articles about microcredit for magazines or UN publications. Finally, I do consulting JICA and World Bank.

Any good or bad points?
I like my lifestyle. I’m very fortunate. I’m more like a freelancer. I’m also the part-time Project Coordinator for RESULTS, but there are no working hours. I can work from home, from Starbucks, from China, from Brazil, as long as I do my job. As for negative point… in a Japanese sense, there’s no physical organization, I don’t have a boss, so I cannot have teamwork, like for a big project.

How’s the pay?
It’s fine. I can live in a nice apartment in Tokyo and still save money. Usually Japanese companies do not pay much but my work pays the same as foreign private companies.

I hear young Japanese girls might make only 150,000 a month.
I think that’s normal for Japanese NGOs.

What do you do with RESULTS?
My project is the Bill and Melinda Gates fund project, to battle tuberculosis. I talk to DIET members and government officials. It’s political. NGO work itself is political. Many Japanese NGOs don’t realize that. They’re satisfied with doing tiny work in Brazil or Cambodia. I don’t blame that but it cannot make big change. RESULTS is unique because we don’t do anything ourselves. We try to get the government to make changes to eliminate poverty. Our slogan is, “We create the political will to eliminate poverty and hunger.”

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