"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.

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 It turned out, the tsunami not only  wiped out the town but also eliminated outdated, awkward ways of interacting.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?