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The corporate citizenship
activities that Ajinomoto Group develops under a unified theme.
As part of the"global
activities", we have been promoting AIN
activities since 1999
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Ajinomoto
International Cooperation for "Nutrition and Health" Support
Program
-The support activities have been determined-
Ajinomoto Group has been providing grants for international
cooperation activities that could contribute to improving
society in the fields of "food, nutrition and
health" aiming to support local communities in
developing countries.
We have determined a total of 6 projects as support
activities by public offering from September to December
of 2004.
| Activity
commencing from April 2005 |
Outline
and adopted results of "Ajinomoto International
Cooperation for 'Nutrition and Health' Support
Program"
We, Ajinomoto Group, continually strive
to promote a healthy and vibrant society
with global corporate citizenship activities
focusing on "nutrition and health".
In 1999, Ajinomoto International Cooperation
Network for "Nutrition and Health": AIN
was established as a promotion organization
for "International cooperation in the
fields of food, nutrition and health"
aiming to support local communities in
developing countries. Since then, we have
supported 10 activities in partnership
with NGOs, etc. around the world (as of
March 31st, 2005). AIN consists of experts
in the fields of food, nutrition and health
and NGO staff, etc. (8 people total) and
conduct discussions on the direction of
our programs and planning for holding
the "International Cooperation Forum in
the fields of "food, nutrition and health",
etc. at the regular committee meetings
held twice a year. (Representative: Miyuki
Adachi, R.D., Ph.D., Dean and Professor,
Graduate School, Kagawa Nutrition University)
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Special
conditions for selection process of
this fiscal year
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We had conventionally
applied a Recommendation system for selection
of support activities; at first, AIN Committee
members or other people concerned recommended
some activities. After discussing them
at the AIN Committee meeting and site
visits by AIN Secretariat (Corporate Philanthropy
Team, Public Relations Dept., Ajinomoto
Co., Inc.) support activities were finally
determined by the Ajinomoto Group Corporate
Citizenship Committee.
This year however,
under the main objective of utilizing
the overall accomplishments of support
activities and administering applications
and selections to more extensively assess
the social needs, we employed a Public
offering system.
We also established two items,
"1: New Activity Support (Support
for activities that are going to start)"
and "2: Continuous Activity Support
(Support for activities already underway
on a full scale)" and made distinctions
between the two in "Support Period
(1= 1 year, 2= 3 years) " and "Support
Amount (1= 1 million yen, 2= 2 million
yen / year).”
Additionally, we established
a requirement for "Applicant Eligibility"
as "In principle, the applicant is
a non-profit organization based in Japan"
for the first condition, and for "non-profit
organizations based overseas only",
"If the 'non-profit organization
based overseas only' has a letter of recommendation
by an organization / group (excluding
individuals) based in Japan, the possibility
of application eligibility will be examined."
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Records
of application of this fiscal year
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We received a total of 18
applications from the organizations domestically
and internationally through public offering
from September 1st to December 10th in
2004 with the support targets of improvement
activities, (1 "Practical activities",
2 "Education and development / provision
of educational materials" 3 "Technical
research") in "overall themes
related to the fields of food, nutrition
and health" in "Mainly Southeast
Asia and South America".
Records
of application
| [
Application type • Implementing
regions / Applying organization ] |
New
Activity Support |
Continuous
Activity Support |
Total |
| Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
| Non-profit
organization based in Japan |
3 |
0 |
5 |
1 |
9 |
| Non-profit
organization based overseas only |
6 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
9 |
| Total |
9 |
1 |
6 |
2 |
18 |
Regarding "non-profit
organizations based overseas only",
we also requested the organization / group
of the recommending party to submit the
recommendation documents such as "introduction
of the business outline of the recommending
party", "introduction of the
business outline of the organization to
be recommended", "a letter of
recommendation" etc. First, the possibility
of application eligibility was examined
by the AIN Secretariat.
At the same time, we discussed
the credibility of the organization /
group of the recommending party as well
as the organization recommended in the
event of requesting the recommending party
for a follow-up after the application
(or the start of supported activities).
We rejected recommendations of "non-profit
organizations based overseas only"
made by an individual (not an organization
/ group).
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Selection
method and process
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[Pre-Screening]
After the acceptance
deadline for application documents (by
mail postmarked by December 10th), all
the application documents (pamphlets,
reports of activities, other reference
materials including some excerpts at the
discretion of the AIN Secretariat) of
18 candidates were delivered to the selection
committee (AIN Committee) and the Committee
provided assessment results based on the
designated evaluation sheet as a pre-screening
of the First Screening. The items on the
evaluation sheet are in accordance with
"Selection Standards and Selection
Method" in the application outline.
Points awarded were marked for each standard
"1 Experience and ability as an organization",
"2 Details of application activities"
and "3 Various conditions to implement
activities" and regarding the contents
points alone could never evaluate, these
comments were recorded in the [Other comments]
section. A final comprehensive evaluation
was marked by letter grade scale of A-D
(A: Very high to D: low) from the total
points awarded and consideration for the
[Other comments]. As for the selection
standards of "4 Potential of participation
of Ajinomoto Group", the points were
marked only for the applying candidates
who had a comprehensive evaluation of
A (Very high) or B (High) as well as the
selection standards of 1 to 3.
[The
First Screening]
The first screening
(selection of support candidates by AIN
Committee) was held on January 27th, 2005.
The screening was implemented in the form
that each committee member express their
views of acceptance or rejection on the
following focal points by an "application
that was evaluated as relatively low",
"application that was evaluated as
relatively high" and "application
that was evaluated as intermediate"
based on the total score of the evaluation
sheets collected from each committee member
beforehand, and then decided by consultation.
(1) The activity is
related to the fields of food, nutrition
and health
(Whether improvement targets related to
the fields are clearly identified in the
activity with adequacy of activity / budget
planning and implementation systems for
achieving it, or not.)
(2) The activity
is the "Practical activities"
in principle.
(In case of "Education and development
/ provision of educational materials"
or "Technical research", whether
we can confirm the prospect which will
lead to "Practical activities"
in the future, or not.)
(3) The beneficiaries
of the activity are people directly, such
as local residents, etc.
(Whether there is a possibility for promoting
self-reliance to the local residents,
etc., not only for service providers,
or not.)
Additionally, we included the following
viewpoints for indicating the final results
of the first selection.
• Balance of the targeted
area
• Balance between "non-profit
organization based in Japan" and
"non-profit organization based overseas
only"
• Balance of scale (in terms of size)
of applying organizations
• Balance of the beneficiaries (mothers
and children, pregnant women, adolescents,
the less fortunate, local residents in
general)
Though the activity theme
the applying organizations are engaged
in cover a broad range of fields this
time, the following tendencies were observed
as a whole.
1) The activities require
confirmation of relevance to an objective
of the support program because their direct
objectives were primarily different (income
improvement, agricultural development,
prevention and treatment of specified
diseases, etc.) although potential relevance
to "improvement in the fields of
'food, nutrition and health'" was
recognized.
2) The activities' intent is significant,
like an advanced model case, adding a
new perspective of "nutrition improvement"
to the particular areas (Reproductive
Health, disability prevention, environmentally
safe agriculture, etc.) which applying
organizations have ample experience.
3) The activities are lacking potential
self-reliance development for residents
after completion of the activities because
the specific activities aiming at "nutrition
improvement" were not able to advance
beyond the bounds of temporary income
improvement or provision of nutritional
support to obtain food, etc.
4) The activities are lacking an approach
leading to "Practical activities"
based on actual needs after the investigation,
research, educational materials development,
etc.
5) The activity has too much or too little
involvement of experts in the fields of
"food, nutrition and health".
In the first screening,
we selected 8 activities among the 18
activities applying as "support candidates".
Results of selection of the first screening:
|
[ Application type • Implementing
regions / Applying organization
]
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New
Activity Support |
Continuous
Activity Support |
Total |
| Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
| Non-profit
organization based in Japan |
2 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
| Non-profit
organization based overseas only |
3 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
| Total |
5 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
8 |
[Site
visits]
Site visits were conducted
on the "support candidates"
selected in the first screening.
Regarding activities whose implementing
region is Southeast Asia, site visits
were conducted by the AIN secretariat
Tokyo, from mid to late February. We visited
and reviewed the planned sites of activities
with accompanying by the local person
in charge of the applied activities, interviewed
the persons concerned and the beneficiaries.
In particular, we conducted a review on
the following viewpoints.
1 Whether the organization
has good relations with the counterpart
and the community (residents, leaders
of the village, volunteers, etc.), or
not.
2 Whether the activity leader has the
trust of people in the organization, counterpart
and community and exercises leadership,
or not.
3 The appropriateness of the activity
objective ( whether it accords with actual
needs / the data that shows the present
situation, or not, or whether it is related
to the "fields of food, nutrition
and health", or not.)
4 Whether the activity target is shared
with the beneficiaries (residents of the
community, etc.), or not.
5 Whether an infrastructure is developed
for the implementation of the activity
(office equipment etc.), or not.
6 Whether there is expert / full-time
staff in the "fields of food, nutrition
and health" for the activity implementation
in the organization (or counterpart),
or not.
7 Whether there is a potential of participation
of Ajinomoto Group except for the grant?
8 On the site visit, whether there are
not any concerns for security in the facilities
condition for accommodations, access from
the airport, etc.
Regarding those activities
with implementing regions in South America,
interviews with the local person in charge
of the activity was conducted by Ajinomoto
Group’s overseas affiliate staff
(Ajinomoto del Peru S.A. and Sao Paulo
Office, Latin America Division, Global
Food & Amino Acid Company) from late
February to early March. The AIN Secretariat
compiled the site visit reports that take
into account the comments of these affiliates
and offices because their follow-up is
essential for support activities in South
American regions from a long distance
perspective.
[The
Second Screening]
The AIN Secretariat
submitted a resolution for the final selection
results based on the site visit reports
to Ajinomoto Group Corporate Citizenship
Committee (Chairman: Takeshi Suzuki, Member
of the Board & Corporate Executive
Deputy President and 11 other members
of the Committee) and gained approval.
Results
of selection of the second screening:
| [
Application type • Implementing
regions / Applying organization ] |
New
Activity Support |
Continuous
Activity Support |
Total |
| Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
Southeast
Asia |
South
America |
| Non-profit
organization based in Japan |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
| Non-profit
organization based overseas only |
3 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
| Total |
4 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
6 |
| Total
grants in fiscal year 2005 is 7 million
yen |
The selection results
were nearly in accordance with the initially
determined number (approximately 6 activities)
and total amount of grants (approximately
10 million yen for the total amount of grants
for 2005). The breakdown shows partiality
in that 5 activities are "New Activity
Support" and just one is "Continuous
Activity Support". Additionally, even
though "in principle, the applicant
is a non-profit organization based in Japan",
there were an equal number of applications
from "non-profit organizations based
overseas only", consequently the result
became different from that initially determined.
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The
future of 'Ajinomoto International Cooperation
for "Nutrition and Health"
Support Program'
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(1) Implementation
of public offering of support activity
of fiscal year 2006
We are currently discussing the annual
schedule (public notification will be
made in September 2005) in a similar manner
to this year. We would like to adjust
and improve the issues on the method of
application acceptance and selection in
public offering for the next term.
(2) Activity evaluation
In accordance with the current application
outline, an activity evaluation will be
conducted upon completion of the agreement
of "New Activity Support", each
year after starting support and upon completion
of the agreement of "Continuous Activity
Support" for enhancing the achievement
of the activities. As an advance preparation
for that, common target and focal point
of activity, etc. will be shared with
the involved parties (implementing organizations,
beneficiaries, Ajinomoto Group, etc.)
based on the Evaluation sheet that Ajinomoto
Group offers after starting the activity
(April 2005).
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We have reported the Outline and selection
results of the support program to you as stated above.
Through this public offering, we acknowledged that
through the acceptance of everyone we could make this
support program. We would like to express our gratitude
to everyone involved in the activity such as related
NGO / NPO and university "that applied domestically
and internationally", recommending parties that
recommended and followed up with applying organizations,
local residents, staff of healthcare centers, volunteers,
etc., who join the activities. We are also grateful
to the organizations that did not apply this time,
but provided us precious information and advice.
In closing, we sincerely wish the organizations that
selection has been decided for are determined to achieve
great results that are presently targeted, and the organizations
that unfortunately had their activities rejected this
time, would apply for the support program again in the
future.
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March
31st, 2005 |
Representative
of AIN:
Miyuki Adachi,
R.D., Ph.D., Dean and Professor, Graduate School,
Kagawa Nutrition University |
Norio
Yamaguchi,
Member of the Board & Corporate Senior Vice
President, Ajinomoto Co., Inc.
Managing director of Ajinomoto Group Corporate
Citizenship activities |
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