Japanese Visit Hyde Heath - Sat March 6th 2004

Customers of Hyde Heath Village Shop now extend well beyond the boundaries of its village with the most recent visitors travelling from Japan to make special purchases of locally sourced goods on their current visit to the UK. They also wished to find out how a group of villagers established and continue successfully to manage a community owned shop which combines the virtues of a not for profit organisation with a commercial approach to running its business.

 On Saturday 6^th March a team of four from Japanese universities visited Hyde Heath Shop as part of their research project titled ‘International Comparative Research on Structures for Collaboration of Community Business’.  This involves a study tour to research the voluntary and not for profit sector in the UK, and in particular the role of  social enterprise and community involvement.  Their objective is to gain an insight into what lessons can be learned which can be applied in Japan and other countries, some of  whose voluntary sectors are less well developed than those in the Western World.

 A group photograph taken at the Shop shows, Hiroyuki Shimizu, a lecturer in Urban Sociology at Tokyo Gakugei University, Kenichi Kitajima, professor of Economics at Matsuyama University, mainly working on Socio-Economic analysis of the role of the Third Sector in society and the economy, Atsushii Fujii an associate professor of Economics at Tohoku University specialising in voluntary organisation and the role of social enterprise, and Miyuki Kusamizu who has just completed her Doctor’s course at Rikkyo University in Comparative Organisational Network studies. Also pictured are Robin Rowland, Chairman of the Chiltern Society and acting as Leader of the Group and also as leader of his recently established Global Links Initiative (GLI); and Ruth Coulton manager of Hyde Heath Village Shop.

GLI is a not for profit organisation aimed at facilitating positive and creative action on social inclusion issues, both in developed and developing countries and between them using information technology to make practical links among socially entrepreneurial people around the world.

Further information about Hyde Heath Village Shop can be obtained from Ray Challinor on 01494-776200, ray@challinor1.demon.co.uk or www.hydeheath.com, or about the GLI Initiative from Robin Rowland on 01494 725386,  robin.rowland@glinet.org

6.3.04

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