Weaving Nest
Program

Gather - Unlearn - Connect - Adapt - Belong

What is Weaving Nest Program?

Community Building Program with the Power of Cross-sector Collaboration

"Weaving Nest" is a community building program that gathers 30 key stakeholders from different sectors—such as government, businesses, and NPOs — within a community. This initiative fosters flat, peer-like connections among these leaders, similar to being "classmates" in the town. During our program, participants collaborate by pooling their resources to develop ideas and projects that aim to improve the community. Essentially, Weaving Nest serves as a public-private co-creation platform within the community and a program designed to generate collective impact.

-------- Through our program, you will collaboratively weave your own unique nest with fellow local leaders across various sectors. Together, we aim to create a collective impact within the community through these shared efforts, or we call it social capital.

Weaving Nest operates as the first branch in the United States of the NGO Connecting 30, the parent organization based in Tokyo, Japan. As of June 2024, the NGO is operating in 13 different regions throughout Japan through word of mouth, with no marketing. The full length of the program spans over 6 months, while the U.S. program runs for half a day to two days. Keep scrolling for more stories.

Our Chapters

This initiative began in 2016 in Shibuya and, as of 2022, has expanded to cities across Japan, including Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Hiroshima. The program now includes over 600 individuals nationwide who are dedicated to "connecting" their communities. From this network, numerous unique public-private partnership projects and co-creation initiatives have emerged, leading to the development of solutions for regional issues and the enhancement of civic pride.

Testimony from the Mayor of Shibuya City

Facilitating cross-sector collaboration is achievable with the support of local organizations, particularly from the city hall. Weaving Nest (i.e., NGO Connecting 30) began in Shibuya in 2016. Mr. Ken Hasebe shares his insights on this community-building program.

Note: The culture and presence of Shibuya is equivalent to the Times Square in New York City with their 221,800 population.

Japanese Umbrella Project

Mr. Osugi's team developed this project during our community-building session in 2023. Hiroshima City faced a challenge with the millions of paper cranes sent annually to commemorate the atomic bombing. While these cranes hold significant meaning for the city, they often had no designated place to go after being displayed for a year. Mr. Osugi, a program participant and representative from an auto parts company, met local leaders through our program and collaborated with them to create a unique craft, that both honors local culture and addresses the city's issue. With the support of his company supervisor, Mr. Osugi and his company began producing this product, establishing a new revenue source to their company.

What Makes Us Different?

Humans have always gathered to form communities to solve collective challenges. However, as the complexities of our modern issues have evolved — becoming much more complicated and ambiguous with lots of uncertainty — we started seeing the limitation of traditional models for community building. Personal interests have become increasingly diverse, yet large-scale collaboration often necessitates prioritizing organizational objectives above individual desires, which is simply not fun and that's why it doesn't last. We are humans with emotions and motivations, before we are a professional. We believe this is time to build our community with a different approach.

Existing Models

Overall: Faster, Predictive, Short lasting, Centralized, Focused impact
Theme Focus: Organizer sets the topic with their interest
Structure: Org-to-Org interactions
Engagement: Series of discrete, singular events
Organizer's Role: Centralized, as the "hub"
Participants: Similar interests from related fields
Outcome: Predetermined, Based on the organizations' goal
Goal Setting: Organizer-driven objectives

Weaving Nest Model

Overall: Slower, Unpredictive, Long lasting, Collectively personalized, Broader Impact
Theme Flexibility: We ask participants to bring their themes
Structure: Individual-to-individual connections
Engagement: Ongoing, multi-session engagements
Organizer's Role: Decentralized, as a neutral platform
Participants: Little overlapping from unrelated fields
Outcome: Unpredicted, based on the inividuals' genuine interests
Goal Setting: Participant-driven objectives

the Birth of Our Model

Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011

We did not design this Weaving Nest Model by thinking hard at a desk - we simply couldn't have.

On March 11, 2011, Tohoku was hit by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake. An hour later, a massive tsunami from the Pacific Ocean pulled everything into the deep sea - houses, ships, trees, crops, and people. 18,000 people were gone instantly.

But, there were people left on the cleared land with a pile of debris. They needed to rebuild their lives just to stay alive. They gathered to figure out what needed to be done, where to get supplies from, and how to care for the injured. Everyone did everything they could to make it through each day. There was no room to care about traditional protocols or hesitating to cross organizational boundaries. People found ways to collaborate and survive the disaster.

Years later, the town was functioning quite differently from other regions. It turned out, the tsunami not only wiped out the town but also eliminated outdated, awkward ways of interacting. The people lost everything, but rebuilt their community based on real needs and trust relationships. Our founder, Takahiko Nomura, a professor of Slow Leadership, came to the town for a consulting work, and was shocked by how the community was functioning. He took this surprising findings, developed them into a model, and tried it out in a largest city in Japan - Shibuya, Tokyo. Since then, we have been re-creating this Tohoku phenomenon to revive various towns. Organic growth of a community may take longer, but it is far more genuine and long-lasting to solve any type of issues.

Switching the topic to you - How is your community functioning? Do people collaborate freely and effectively in your town?

Weaving Nest in the United States

Weaving Nest is currently running a program in Phoenix, AZ with shorten version, tailored to meet the unique needs of American culture and local organizations. Our program is specifically designed to resonate with the community, ensuring relevance and impact. For details on upcoming programs, please visit our "Contact" and "Events" pages.

The Weaving Nest Program is an initiative spun off from NGO Connecting 30, designed to expand its impact further to oversea locations. It is managed by the same leadership team as the headquarters of NGO Connecting 30 with the help of local team members.