Do you know what kind of volunteer you are? Interested in what types of community service opportunities are out there? Ever thought about what it takes to volunteer and how giving back can benefit you both personally and professionally?
Join us for our Mentoring Moment’s Senpai Brunch on Sunday, April 22, with our member volunteer experts, Mari Kiyota of Baamboo and Selena Hoy of TELL, who will share their own unique experiences in community service, offer tips on how you too can get involved in volunteering and answer your burning questions. This is an intimate group of up to 10 FEW members only. Take a look at our featured experts below!
About Mentoring Moments
FEW Mentoring Moments Senpai Dinners and Brunches are part of a series exclusively for FEW members to ask questions to our FEW member experts regarding featured personal and professional topics. The event takes place every other month of the FEW year and provides FEW member mentors (“Senpai”) with the opportunity to share their knowledge or expertise in a given area with fellow members as a way of giving back to the community.
Selena Hoy, Outreach Coordinator, TELL
I started getting serious about volunteering around 2009, and subsequently enrolled in Temple University Japan’s NGO Management Certificate course. Partway through the program, the 2011 disaster struck, and armed with the contacts that I had learned about in the course, I headed up to Fukushima to volunteer with the first org that could use me, doing animal rescue. I ended up living there for nearly a year, and when I finally came back to Tokyo, I got a temp job and applied to graduate school. While working on my Master’s in Social Work, I worked summers with the wonderful organization Mirai no Mori, which does outdoor programs with kids in institutional care. I also completed two field placements at refugee agencies, Japan Association for Refugees in Tokyo, and Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement in Portland, Oregon. Now I am on staff at TELL as their Outreach Coordinator.
Mari Kiyota, Digital Marketing and Social Outreach, Baamboo
My name is Mari, and I’m a lifelong volunteer and activist! Career-wise, I work on digital marketing and social outreach for Baamboo, a non-profit startup connecting NPOs/NGOs with skilled connections to generate growth solutions. I currently volunteer weekly doing baby massage at a Tokyo hospital, as well as do various programs with Hands on Tokyo. I’m also working digitally with Love Without Boundaries, an international organization supporting children from under-served communities. ‘Follow your joy’ is my policy in regards to finding and committing to meaningful volunteer work.