Have you ever had an experience where your life changed completely?

After graduating from high school, I worked in a factory for five years, and then enrolled in a vocational school for welfare at the age of 24. There, I had an experience that completely changed my life.

The vocational school had an optional event called "Vietnam Training," which I decided to take part in. During the training, I had the opportunity to visit a nursing home in Vietnam, which shocked me. In Japanese nursing homes, it is common to have beds that can be raised and lowered with the push of a button, but in the Vietnamese facilities, frail elderly people were lying on simple beds that looked like the kind you'd find on a beach.

After witnessing this scene, I strongly felt that if I wanted to master welfare, I needed to look at more poverty around the world.

After graduating from a vocational school, I decided that I needed English in order to see the poverty in the world with my own eyes, so I studied abroad in Australia for a year. After that, I used the money I had saved from a part-time job while studying abroad to participate in overseas volunteer work in Indonesia and Nepal, and also traveled across the African continent by bus, train, and hitchhiking, experiencing local life firsthand.

During that trip, I saw many children suffering from poverty. However, I was deeply disappointed in myself for not being able to do anything for those children in front of me, and I felt a sense of regret like never before. This experience made me strongly desire to become someone who could save children in need in front of me.

This is the root of my passion for child welfare.

I also saw many homeless people in Africa, including many with disabilities, and I will never forget the sight of a homeless person in Cape Town, South Africa, rummaging through trash cans on the street to find food and then actually eating it.

Immediately after returning to Japan, I began working at a facility for people with disabilities. I found that people with disabilities were working very hard in Japan. Having seen people with disabilities forced to live homeless lives in Africa, I was amazed by this and was struck by the potential of welfare.

It was at that moment that I realized the great value of working in welfare.

I became convinced that welfare work has the power to dramatically change people's lives for the better. I was so moved by this potential that I began to take pride in my work in welfare.

However, at the same time, I was faced with a certain reality. Despite doing such a wonderful job, the staff on the ground were exhausted and working with a sense of hopelessness. They were forced to work unpaid overtime and holidays, their new ideas were drowned out, and their salaries were low. Furthermore, interpersonal relationships in the workplace were poor. Under these circumstances, I witnessed the staff losing their passion and creativity.

This experience is the origin of Garat General Incorporated Association's philosophy of "employee first."
I have always had a strong desire to completely change welfare work from a "difficult job" to an "exciting job."

After that, I gained a variety of experiences, such as opening a bar (which was caught in a fire and closed six months later), starting an online shop, working at a nursing home, starting video editing, and living out of my car.All of these were "resources" that I could use in child welfare.

Later, I ended up working at a home for supporting independent living, where young people aged around 15 to 20 who were finding it difficult to live at home due to abuse and other reasons lived, and I learned that there were many children in Japan who needed support.

Furthermore, I realized that there was not a single independent living support home in the northern part of Tochigi Prefecture, where I live, so I decided to start one myself, and founded the general incorporated association Garat.

Garratt's motto is "Employees First." The happiness and health of our employees is the greatest benefit to the organization, and we will do our utmost to make this a reality.

Of course, this does not mean that we disregard the users. We believe that if staff members work with a sense of fulfillment and enjoyment, and with a spark in their eyes, it will ultimately lead to the best interests of the users and the community.

At Garat, we, together with our colleagues, are fully committed to unleashing our passion and creativity, enjoying welfare to the fullest, and aiming for a future where we can completely change the conventional wisdom of welfare.