Comachiplus is a non-profit organization, found in 2012. We operate a “community café” called “Comachi Café” It is a café which focuses on the social problem of mothers who are deeply isolated in the Japanese society. 60% of women is said to quit their job after giving birth to their child, many highly-educated and with many careers, but not being able to go back to work because of several social problems, such as lack of nurseries, lack of help from their husbands/families, difficulty of work-life balance (difficulties in work environment), and also, some give boundaries to themselves.
“Comachi” stands for “child-raising with the society”, and this café is to reconnect the social bonds to support child-raising, and to support the mothers to refresh, to find someone to reply and to be relied on in the society, and to find their life and career balance. We outreach many of our methods of “making new bonds in the society”, not only to the mothers, but to the aged and the disabled. As a result, we are seeing new small bonds in various sizes and areas, and we are determined that such clusters of social bonds will make an innovative and heart-warming society.
This café is run by 50 staffs and volunteers, ages from 10s to 60s, and on week-days, there is always a volunteer to look after the babies and children. Café provides healthy lunches and desserts with no flour, no eggs, and with no dairy products, and with no white sugar, and the some plates do not use meat either, for goodness of health and also so that families with allergy can enjoy the same meals together. The open-hours are from 10am -17 pm, Monday to Saturday, lunch hours from 11am-14pm, and due to the capacity of the space and the tables are often fully booked, it is better to make reservation. (Lunch reservation can only be made from 11:00am or from 12:30am, and in each reservation time, one can relax and enjoy lunch for one and half hour)
Everyone is welcome, of any age, sex, nor the status of child-raising, and would be grateful if you could enjoy the laughter and the crying of the babies and children in the café, and having warm words to the mothers with us in the café.
Except for this café, our organization runs an information center for child-raising, with over 10,000 visitors per year, and we also run seminars and workshops for starting and continuing new businesses, especially in the area of social entrepreneurship and community cafes. We publish books in small amount for outreach, and provide local child-raising information through internet.
Also, we serve as an innovation center, matching the needs of mothers and the resources of private and public sectors. For example, in March of 2017, we are about to release a vending machine with 2 companies, which has diapers and drinks in the same machine. (This idea was brought up by a father, in 2016, and this machine has been tested over few thousand times, for its Japan-premier release)
