Chaewon Ohara
IR Team, Corporate Communication Department, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd.

As a foreigner living in Japan, I myself dealt with loneliness and anxiety when I was giving birth and raising my child. I started volunteering so I could be there for women going through the same types of things I went through.

Donating Meiji Hohoemi powdered milk not only lets us tell mothers about powdered milk in Japan, but also the benefits of Meiji products. We can feel that we've made a difference in women's lives. I hope to continue sharing Meiji Hohoemi and supporting foreign mothers living in Japan. I want to bring smiles to as many faces as possible!

Shun Taga
Filling & Packaging Technical Development Section, Technical Development Department, Production Division, KM Biologics Co., Ltd.

There are three volunteer organizations*1 active within Meiji Seika Pharma and KM Biologics. Core members of each organization met through the "Talking with Management"*2 initiative, which is part of the meiji brand promotion project. We realized their activities and thinking had quite a lot in common. So we began sharing creative approaches and expertise gained from our activities, participating in each other's events, and exchanging members between organizations.

This collaboration lets us share individual lessons learned and challenges, and it encourages a positive mindset. At the same time, it helps expand the participants' internal and external networks, so a wide range of ideas can emerge.

*1 MeiBridge organizes educational and other events aimed at creating a company in which employees can work with a sense of purpose, DTM offers study sessions for improving employees' digital literacy, and Wakupuro holds study sessions and presentation competitions for employee and company growth.

*2 A program in which senior management (chief officers) and employees engage in dialogue. It aims to promote employees' understanding and implementation of meiji's unique value for wellness.

(Left) Yukiko Yokoi
Manager, Head of Formulation Research Lab. Group 1, Pharmaceutical Research Center, Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd.
(Right)
Junichi Kaneshige
Manager, Formulation Section Group 2, Formulation Technology Center, Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd.

After seeing the meiji Brand Awards in the previous year, we also wanted to share meiji's unique value for wellness with society. We decided to use Meiji products for health-related experiments specifically for children.

We often communicate with medical professionals, but we usually don't have any contact with kids. The children who took part asked us many questions, like, "How do I become a researcher?" This made us really proud of what we do. We want to continue demonstrating meiji's unique health-related benefits through our work.

Kenji Ueda
Aso Production Section 1, Aso Plant, Production Division, KM Biologics Co., Ltd.

The Aso Plant manufactures equine serum/plasma crystals, which are used as raw materials for human antitoxin products. It also raises specific pathogen-free (SPF) animals such as chickens and pigs. Because of the kind of work we do, the plant is about an hour and a half drive from the city of Kumamoto. This led to personnel issues such as fixed duties and a lack of transfers and new assignees.

The whole plant was trying to improve the quality of life for the horses, and we were also trying to create a more open workplace. So, we decided to give plant tours to employees and their families, and to the local community and children.

Through the project, we were able to find solutions to issues we'd been aware of but unable to think and act together to concretely improve on. I'm very glad all our members were able to combine their energy to solve issues and actively communicate with each other.