Certified NPO Corporation Piccolare

Certified NPO Corporation Piccolare supports isolated young pregnant women and mothers in their teens and twenties. In this interview, we spoke with Representative Director Kaori Nakajima.

Representative Director Nakajima

Please tell us about your background and what motivated you to start your activities.

When I had my second child at a maternity hospital, I thought midwifery was a wonderful job, so I went back to university to become a midwife. Later, while working as a midwife in a hospital and also supporting child-rearing in the community, I met a girl raising her child, who she gave birth to at the age of 16. Seeing her use her own experience in pregnancy and childbirth to single-handedly counsel her friends, I thought that as a midwife, I could also do something for those who are struggling with pregnancy.
Another motivation was listening to a lecture by Yukiko Tajiri, a midwife involved in the establishment of the “Stork's Cradle” at Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto City in 2015. In the lecture, I learned that Jikei Hospital receives thousands of consultations on pregnancy-related conflicts each year, with about 30% of them coming from the Tokyo metropolitan area. I was deeply shocked to hear that some people give birth alone, risking their lives, and then immediately travel to Kumamoto with their babies without any support. In that lecture, I also learned for the first time that the most common age for deaths due to child abuse is 0 months and 0 days, in other words, newborns. Realizing that people were being isolated due to a lack of a safe environments to discuss pregnancy concerns, I decided that we needed to establish a trustworthy consultation service in Tokyo and, with the help of colleagues, we raised funds through crowdfunding and launched “Ninshin SOS Tokyo” in December 2015.

What do you feel were the benefits of starting the organization?

“Everyone always asked me, 'What do you want to do?' And now I can finally ask myself that question.”

These are the words of a user who lived for about six months at “Pisara” (meaning “droplet” in Finnish), a homefor young pregnant women we established in June 2020. When I heard these words, I was truly glad that since starting Pisara, we consistently conveyed the message through daily life that “it's okay to make your own decisions.”

Also, the publication of the 'Pregnancy Conflict White Paper' in 2021 was a significant step in making the existence of conflict in pregnancy visible in society and communicating this issue to the public. As a result of continuing advocacy activities grounded in the contents of the white paper, laws and systems that can be used by people facing pregnancy conflicts are beginning to be established. I believe that establishing the organization and continuing our activities with our colleagues has enabled us to contribute to these positive social changes.

“Pregnancy Conflict White Paper: Perspective from the Point of Care at Ninshin SOS Tokyo” (Published April 2021)

What future developments are you considering for the home creation project?

“project HOME” is a project instilled with the hope that visitors will feel they can choose the things they want, that it's okay to live, and that they are welcome here, and that someday they will find their own HOME.

Pisara is used by young pregnant women who, due to various circumstances, do not have a safe place to stay during their pregnancy. We will of course continue efforts to see what does and doesn’t work to ensure that Pisara remains a home where they can feel it's okay to be here, it's okay to live, and it's okay to make their own choices. In the future, we want to ensure that those leaving Pisara can live their daily lives in a region that they feel is their home by meeting, connecting with, and engaging in dialogue with various stakeholders in the community, including organizations that support pregnant women. In this way, we actively seek to create a community that has a compassionate outlook toward young pregnant women.

Scenes from Pisara

How are the donations from FIT being used?

The stay at Pisara lasts from about two months to six months. We aim to create a place where, even after moving on from Pisara to somewhere else, they can always come back. As more people move on from Pisara, there is rising demand for day visits or short stays, similar to a mother and child returning to their hometown. The donations from FIT are being used for operational expenses of the homefor pregnant women, Pisara, and to provide aftercare for those leaving Pisara to enable them to return anytime to discuss their future and receive child-rearing support. The donations are also used for expenses related to awareness and public relations activities to change the societal structures that prevent people from making decisions about their own bodies, which is often a background issue in difficult pregnancies.

How can we support you?

“I don't have money, so I haven't been to the hospital”
“I don't have anywhere to stay tonight.”
“Before I knew it, my belly had gotten so big.”
“I was also to blame, after all.”
“Because it happened to my body, I thought I had to deal with it alone.”

Ninshin SOS Tokyo overflows with these kinds of statements.

Problems in pregnancy can stem from backgrounds that comprise a cobweb of myriad compounding societal issues such as financial distress, absence of a partner, neglect of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and inadequate societal systems that hinder pregnancy-related self-determination, and I would be grateful to bring this to the attention of even one more person.

It is with the understanding and concern of all citizens that Japan's situation regarding SRHR, which is lagging far behind the rest of the world, will change for the better and realize a society where people can ask for help even for pregnancy issues.

We aim to eliminate isolation in pregnancy and the 0-months, 0-days deaths that stem from that isolation, and hope that people will take an interest in our activities and join us in aiming for a society where everyone can live freely and happily.