Part-time high schools in Japan have many students in various situations such as financial difficulties and school refusal experiences, and about 21% of those students in part-time high schools tend to drop out of school at their first year (that is 14 times number of the students attending to full-time high school).In order to prevent unwilling dropouts and graduation in a career undecided state, we worked at one part-time high school in Osaka Prefecture, by establishing connections between the students and various people, including the community, and also creating a “place to stay” inside and outside the school.

First of all, in order to meet students ( outreach ) we carried out a special program called “Crescendo” which is accredited as an academic unit, and then we built continuous relationships with students at “Igokochi Café” held in once in a week inside of the school, where also served free meals. At that place where clearly states that priority is given to creating a place where each high school student can express himself like himself, adults in a different position from the teacher understood the students' troubles and issues through casual conversations and interactions with the students. We also highlighted the abilities and possibilities inherent in the students and provided intern program at local companies or activity experiences outside the school, collaborating with school teachers, the school social worker (SSW) assigned to the school and outside volunteers including local companies.

In fiscal 2018, more than 80% of the enrolled students used Igokochi Cafe voluntarily, and about half of them used it repeatedly (use more than half of the number of sessions held), and it shows that the student who is the first beneficiary welcomed this place. By this grant from the Toyota Foundation for two years, we received 49 people as volunteers for dialogue with students, 7 companies as food providers, and 3 companies as intern and field trip accepting companies. The local companies who had never been involved with students in part-time high school at all before gradually became interested in each high-school student as seeing them as food providers of Igokochi Café, and now they are thinking of what they can do for these students’ future. In addition to it, they promised to call out to the community working on revitalizing the area for further cooperation in this project.

Based on these achievements, it’s been decided that this project will be officially introduced into another part-time high school located nearby area from 2019. It was a big step we achieved leading to the medium- and long-term goal which is to develop this project in multiple areas in Osaka to prevent unwilling high school dropouts and graduation in a state of undecided careers.