July 1 2009 AM : Visit to Swan Bakery
Training Report - Decent work course
In the morning five participants visited “Swan Bakery Akasaka shop,” with one of the committee member, a professor of Kanagawa Institute of Technology. The President lectured how Swan Bakery was established.
Swan Bakery is corporation that the late Mr. Masao Ogura, founder of the Kuroneko-Yamato Home Delivery Service, established in cooperation with the Yamato Welfare Foundation and the Yamato Transport Co., Ltd.
The number of persons with disabilities in Japan is estimated to account for about 5% of the population, or approximately 6 million people. The majority of them are working in more than 6,000 joint community workshops and small scale sheltered workshops scattered throughout Japan. However, their wages are as low as less than 10,000 yen monthly and under this situation they are far from becoming independent.
The late Mr. Ogura was amazed to know the fact and started to think how it is possible to pay more than 100,000 yen in monthly salaries. Then he got the idea of establishing shops selling “delicious bread fresh from the oven.”
Mr. Ogura gained the understanding and cooperation of Mr. Seiichi Takaki, President of the Takaki Bakery Co., Ltd., which has developed a nationwide network of famous bakery chains “Andersen” and “Little Mermaid”. After finding that it is possible for persons with disabilities to bake bread from the frozen bread dough that Takaki Bakery developed, Mr. Ogura immediately put this into practice. In June 1998, a shop in Ginza, downtown Tokyo, opened as the Swan Bakery's first shop. It was the late Mr. Ogura who named “Swan Bakery”. He took his clue from the work of Hans Andersen, the Danish writer of storybooks, who told the story of what seemed an ugly duckling was in fact a “swan.”
Presently, Swan Bakery shops are scattered across the nation and now there are over 20 outlets employing more than 200 people with disabilities. They have become economically independent and achieved participation in the society through their jobs.
The participants could learn lots of keys to success of business from the President today. Then the participants visited the bakery shop to observe how people with disabilities work. The participants could not distinguish employees with disabilities and without disabilities.
Everyday more than two hundred office workers come to Akasaka Shop to buy breads or to eat lunch during lunch time. The participants of JICA training course, of course tried the popular breads!
