By Haruo Akino

Recently, the number of people with mental disease has been increasing, and the "Sapporo Day Care Center" (after this, the Center) is a facility authorized and financed by Hokkaido　and Sapporo City, for　the rehabilitation of such mentally-handicapped people. The center is located in Shiroishi Ward and its activities began in March of 1989. The organization　is headed by a manager, a section chief, supported by eight staff members and five office workers. About 80 members use the facility but not everyone attends the center every dayﾑsome members have bad health or are members only in name. The activities are held on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of each week.

The Facility has a gymnasium, an outdoor tennis court, an outside Japanese croquet court, a woodworking room, a pottery room, a meeting room, a handicraft room, a cooking room, a small library, a training room, a common room and a tea ceremony room, and all these rooms are made good use of.

The usual activities in the center are divided into five categories: 1. sports activity for everyone, 2. communal activity, 3. small group activity (when the members are divided into four groups), 4. club activity, and 5. the executive committee. At the beginning of the month, all the members and the staff have a joint meeting and discuss the communal sports activities and general activities. Communal sports activities consist of volleyball, ping-pong, Japanese croquet and so on, and staff ask members for comments and set up the schedule. General communal activities mostly include cultural activities such as Karaoke, indoor games, watching videos and so on, which staff and members discuss just as they do the communal sports activities.

The day after the joint meeting, small group meetings are held and each group has to do two things every month. One is to cook lunch and eat it together so that during the meeting each group has to discuss and decide on the menu; the other is to decide on a theme for exchanging views on things which are of interest and discussing the troubles of life. Sometimes, a group takes charge of a snack bar called "Coffee Break." As the number of members in a group is very small, everyone in the group bands together and can be thoughtful.

Club activities are held twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. On Tuesdays, there are activities such as word processing, woodwork, pottery, conversation in English, and calligraphy. On Thursdays, activities such as word processing, pottery, tea ceremony, handicraft, and drawing pictures are practiced. Every member renews his or her activities twice a year, but no one is able to take both word processing and pottery on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All the club activities are supervised by instructors.

The center's events that take place on a yearly basis are Autonomous Activities, Camp, the Kashiwa　(Oak) Festival, the Center Festival, Lecture Meetings and four Completion Ceremonies. The autonomous activity is set for an afternoon each January, February and April, and prior to that day the members　make groups and prepare the things they need for their presentations. The Kashiwa festival in September, and the Center festival in November are similar to S.U. festival in October and S.U. Cultural Festival in June. respectively. The Completion Ceremonies are similar to a school's graduation ceremony, but are held four times a year, so each individual member, his/her parents and the staff hold a tripartite meeting to decide which ceremony they will attend. After that, each member works at a part-time job, does a volunteer job or works in a workshop and does small scale jobs to help him or her to re-enter society. For each event, about ten members and two or three members of staff organize an executive committee and establish the event's independence, hold meetings, and prepare for the events. Also, Sapporo city takes a leading part in a volleyball championship held every March and a softball championship each September for mentally-handicapped people. In the Day Care Center, they appoint a captain and a sub-captain well in advance of the championships and practice a lot so that they have been able to achieve many great results.

As for the Center's aims and goals, the manager explains what the members' and the staff's real purpose is. "Everyone is trying to reach their goal at their own pace. So let's do it by not going too fast but not too slow, either."

In this institution, I have seen with my own eyes that members are trying to reach their goal of re-entering society with courage, pleasure and confidence. If you know somebody with a mental disease, I would like to introduce this institution to you. And why don't you do what you can to support this work and its goals?

For more details, contact "Sapporo Day Care Center" phone 011-861-6353. The address is: Kita1-13 Heiwadori 17chome, Shiroishi ward, Sapporo city, Hokkaido, 003-0029.