Supporting Mothers Staying with Their Children in Hospital (Japan - Pigeon)

  • 17. PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS

2021.09.24

The Pigeon Corporation’s purpose is “to make the world more baby-friendly by furthering our commitment to understanding and addressing babies’ unique needs.” To begin executing on this, we have launched a corporate-led volunteer program that incorporates volunteer leave for employees. In corporate-led volunteer activities, companies play a leading role in presenting possible volunteer activities to their employees, allowing interested employees to volunteer, and then carrying out the activities with the assembled team of volunteers.

In late July 2021, we ran our inaugural corporate-led volunteer activity. Volunteers hand-wrote messages and packaged them up with selected Pigeon products to donate to the “Hospital Stay Support Pack” campaign run by NPO Keep Moms Smiling.

About the Hospital Stay Support Pack campaign

  • Hospital Stay Support Pack

Keep Moms Smiling’s Hospital Stay Support Pack campaign provides food and daily necessities to family members staying with children in pediatric wards across Japan. Currently, many pediatric wards have strict regulations in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in hospital settings. These regulations can make it more difficult for parents to take turns staying in the hospital with their children, or limit the amount of time they can spend outside the hospital. Recognizing the increasing burden on family members—and particularly mothers—accompanying children in the hospital increasing, and to help hospitalized children return to health as quickly as possible, Keep Moms Smiling began this campaign with the goal of giving mothers in this situation a reason to smile.

Donated hygiene products (Pigeon Tahira Corporation)

  • Hand sanitizer
  • Tabletop wet tissues
  • Cleaning wipes
  • No-hot-water foam shampoo

As a countermeasure against the spread of COVID-19 during the day’s activities, we ensured proper ventilation and disinfection, and observed social distance between the small number of volunteers. Hoping to bring as many smiles as possible to mothers accompanying children in hospital across Japan, we also wrote special message cards to include in each package. Keep Moms Smiling director Yuki Mitsuhara and board member Miwako Shiraki joined the event via online meeting to help deepen our understanding of the physical and mental challenges faced by parents accompanying children in hospital wards, particularly right now.

Comment from Keep Moms Smiling director Yuki Mitsuhara

“Even through the screen, it was clear to me that all volunteers were listening seriously to the social issues our NPO faces and the details of our activities. I was pleased and highly encouraged to learn during the discussion afterward that each participant joined the activity for their own personal reasons. Parents staying in hospitals with their children are in a difficult position right now due to restrictions designed to prevent COVID-19 spreading in hospitals. The products chosen for donation in this activity were all things that the mothers in hospitals we surveyed described as ‘Would be pleased to receive.’ We are very grateful to all the volunteers for creating these packages, complete with personalized messages. We will deliver these Hospital Stay Support Packs to family members across Japan, along with your warm support and well-wishes.”

  • Note: Masks were briefly removed for the photograph.

We will continue to support mothers staying at the hospital with their children by donating products for use in Hospital Stay Support Packs.