Using Cutting-Edge Digital Technology to Eliminate Disparities and Revitalize Local Communities
Yabu City Collaboration with KMD “The Yabu Model”
Yabu City has the smallest population of any municipality of its kind in Hyogo Prefecture. To curb population decline, the city has enacted a variety of ambitious initiatives as a part of its comprehensive community development plan. One such initiative is its collaboration with the Keio Graduate School of Media Design (KMD). This collaboration is an experiment designed to demonstrate how to introduce and implement digital infrastructures by utilizing the latest technology that KMD has in its possession as well as cutting-edge educational resources and academic research.
The initiative that Professor Kazunori Sugiura is working on in Yabu City is called the “WAFU” project. The first thing the project focused on was creating a “Parent-Child Workshop” that meets either once or twice a month where elementary and junior high students who live in Yabu City and their guardians can learn together about internet technology and computer science. For these workshops, the organizers designed programs for parents and children where they could get hands-on experience learning about how computers and internet devices are assembled using electronic circuits and other parts. Other workshops allowed participants to use specialized software to make VTuber (virtual YouTuber) content. These workshops are conducted using an educational approach called the “Shared XP Method” that is based on sharing experiences in order to fill in the gaps in different people’s levels of understanding. According to Professor Sugiura, “There are huge environmental disparities in learning about advanced technology when comparing major cities with rural areas. These discrepancies can even contribute to depopulation. I think that the true value of my specialty in networking is constructing environments that overcome our traditional understandings of ‘city’ and ‘countryside.’ That’s what we’re trying to bring about through these workshops.”
The project also hopes to reach the parents and grandparents who accompany their children to these workshops so that they are also given the opportunity to interact with the latest in modern technology. Professor Sugiura and Yabu City officials have felt a positive response to their efforts. Not only have the children enjoyed participating in the workshops, but the adults who accompany them have also been incredibly satisfied with the programming. In the future, the organizers hope to expand the project to children who are unable to attend school due to personal circumstances or other reasons.
Tsukasa Watanabe, an official from Yabu City Hall, said that for the next step in the project, “We are planning to expand the workshops by involving local businesses so that it can also serve as a form of community revitalization. Our goal for Yabu City is to make it into the ‘world’s most business-friendly environment.’ We’ve already been designated as one of Japan’s economic ‘National Strategic Special Zones’ and we plan to use WAFU to facilitate entrepreneurship that incorporates digital technology.”
Likewise, Professor Sugiura’s set goal is “to establish a series of projects to be case studies for the ‘Yabu Model’ and disseminate this information to the rest of the world.”
To achieve these long-term objectives and bridge as many gaps as possible, whether between city and countryside, children, parents, and grandparents, or children who attend school and those who cannot, the workshops will continue as “places of shared experiences.”
(This article was written in March 2024.)
