Field-Born — A Series of Short SDG Documentaries
Taking Sure Steps to Solving Issues Big and Small
- Vol. 9 Because You’re Here
- A habilitation designer specializes in helping people with disabilities live full and happy lives by developing technologies and devices that fit their individual physical needs and surroundings. With wheelchairs, they cast a discerning eye on details that manufacturers typically cannot address and then use their experience and expertise to maximize the functionality afforded to wheelchair users.
- Vol. 8 Yellow Bike Taxis on Nigerian Streets
- Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, but the lack of employment opportunities for young people has become a serious societal issue for the country. In order to provide such opportunities to younger generations and build a better Nigeria today and tomorrow, the goal of one company’s business model is to create jobs for young people, and its yellow motorcycle taxis now ply the streets of the country.
- Vol. 7 Protectors and Preparation
- SCOUT is Shizuoka City’s off-road disaster response motorcycle team established following the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. SCOUT was deployed shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and after the series of severe earthquakes that hit Kumamoto in 2016 to help gather information from the ground, leveraging the mobility advantages innate to motorcycles. This squad of protectors is constantly training in order to always be prepared when emergency strikes.
- Vol. 6 Tipping the Scales from the Air
- Beautiful Norfolk Island on the Pacific Ocean is home to around 2,200 residents and is a roughly three-hour flight from Sydney. Several endemic species of plants and birds also call the island home, but are under threat of going extinct. Fueled by their connection to and respect for the island’s natural environment, the people of Norfolk are working to protect its native inhabitants from an invasive and destructive species of ant.
- Vol. 5 Of Family and the Farm
- The father once declared that the family’s days as rice farmers would end with his generation...but something later changed his mind. The aging of crop producers in Japan continues to accelerate and the country’s agriculture industry is facing a severe shortage of younger farmers to keep it healthy into the next generation. With the advent of new farming methods, tools, and his daughter’s resolve, the father sets off on a new challenge with his daughter, believing that sticking to convention may not always be the right answer.
- Vol. 4 The Soft Ripples of Canal Waters
- The town of Otaru once served as a gateway to Hokkaido during its era of development, and the town prospered thanks to its canal and the small boats that plied it. A man born and raised there recalls how he felt a profound sense of duty to help revive this asset of his hometown, which was in danger of vanishing. It led him to start a canal cruise service and he now believes that, “With the canal alive again, it grows cleaner.”
- Vol. 3 Sharing the Sea’s Blessings
- It has been ten years since the mammoth tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 and brought untold devastation to the country’s northeastern coastline. At Hideshima’s fishing port in Iwate Prefecture, a solitary scallop boat, the Ryushomaru, sits proudly in the water. Its captain, Masahiko Taiko, explains how he wants to communicate the allure of the sea and fishery to future generations and for more people to learn of its many wonders, not just from the delicious scallops his boat harvests but the many other hopes and dreams for the future the craft carries onboard.
- Vol. 2 Nurturing Forests Rich in Sound
- The vast forests of Kitami on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido once constituted a rich natural resource. Seeking to keep Yamaha’s instruments and the music they make around 100 years from now, a member of Yamaha Corporation’s Material Procurement Group walks the forest floor, conducting surveys of the trees. But he has long wondered if there really are no other methods for analyzing large swaths of forest. Today, an industrial-use unmanned helicopter flies above the canopy in Kitami’s skies, rapidly mapping the forest with an onboard laser device.
- Vol. 1 Mobility Bringing People Together
- Around half of the residents of the Tomonoura district of Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture are now senior citizens. Here, the small electric carts of Yamaha’s Green Slow Mobility project slowly carry both elderly locals and visiting tourists up and down its narrow and often-steep streets. Wanting to make getting around easier for people in his hometown, the leader of a local taxi company closely engages with the community to help provide a first- and last-mile solution.
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