As well as playing a lot of football BEFC strongly promote the values of sportsmanship and good relationships through sports. BEFC's Friendly Cup, Onsen Remembers and the recently formed Ladies Club all came to life from the belief that no matter who you are, everyone can come together and form strong and good relationships through sports. Through fostering these relationships, acceptance, friendship and understanding emanate out further into the surrounding community for more inclusive society. However for this to happen there must be the opportunity for people to come together, especially in certain areas where these opportunities are not easily accessible. In this case - sports teams and social opportunities for disabled members of society.

One of our member's Alo is part of 'Para Sports Club Esperanza' an NPO who provide disabled adults and children the opportunity to socialise together through football. As well as increase awareness of the organisation's work, we're supporting their current project to create a Sports Cafe named 'E's Cafe' in Tama Center where disabled people are able to gain training and experience working in the service industry. This projects seeks to aid in breaking down barriers and stigmas present in Japanese society, creating a broader community where people are included and feel accepted regardless of any disability. This project can then emanate out as an example to the wider society.

Here, Alo explains in more detail the project and activities of Para Sports Club Esperanza, plus the opportunity to help support E's Cafe through the Japanese crowdfunding Platform 'readyfor.jp'.

Para Sports Club Esperanza

"Para Sports Club Esperanza" (http://parasc-esperanza.com) is an organisation where disabled children and grownups have an opportunity to play football and socialize. The organisation was established in an attempt to give more opportunities to handicapped people to participate in normal social life through sports and especially through cerebral palsy football. Although Japanese society has made recent strides in accepting and incorporating disabled people into the normal social fabric, it has still long way to go to get to the level of European and Scandinavian countries. As an organisation we are trying to give our part in achieving a barrier free society for all its members regardless of their disabilities.

Currently our company consists of two parts:

Established in 2002,  NPO Para Sports Club Esperanza (www.facebook.com/CP.Soccer.Esperanza) is a football club comprised of members with cerebral palsy who train and play specific 7-a-side Cerebral Palsy (CP) Football in Japanese competitions. We even have two Japanese national team representatives in our ranks! 

The other part of the organization, established in 2015, is an after school day care service for disabled children named Esperanza Next (www.facebook.com/esperanzanext.kawasaki). Here children from 4 years old up to 15 years old with learning or physical disabilities have general activities taught by their instructors/coaches such as English lessons and football sessions but also monthly art and communication lessons taught by specialists in that field.

 

E's Cafe - Cafe Sports Bar (https://www.facebook.com/escafe.tama)

Starting from March 2017 our company will open new venture - a cafe/sports bar called E's Cafe in Tama-Center, Tokyo, where disabled people will have working positions in the food service industry. After getting the cafe running our initial plan is to hire 15 people with disabilities.

The aim is to incorporate disabled people more seamlessly into normal working and social life. The other more specific objective is to help handicapped people earn normal living wage. At the moment most disabled people are employed for low wage light manual factory work where the average wage according to Japanese Ministry of Welfare and Labor is 66,412 yen, or not working at all. To tackle this acute problem in Japanese society we decided that creating cafe where disabled people would have a supportive environment and empowering position would be most appropriate and suitable way to achieve this aim.

Our image of E's cafe is to be similar to the community based club houses that are very common in Europe. Because of this concept and also in context to the NPOs wider work, E's Cafe is located in the vicinity of futsal courts and has a strong link with our Cerebral Palsy football team.

To fund our project we started a crowdfunding project at Ready For, a Japanese crowdfunding platform. Our project page is - https://readyfor.jp/projects/11580/announcements. The overall budget for the entire project is roughly ¥10,000,000. The amount we are aiming at with current crowdfunding  project is set at ¥1,500,000. With this capital we would be covering the costs for workers uniforms, furniture and other costs that come with opening of a cafe. 

So if you find this kind of project worthwhile, please do share and like the project link and this article in social media, come and visit us in March. And if you have a penny to spare, then the donation would be greatly appreciated!

Supporting the Project

Thanks to Alo for the full details there! BEFC fully support this kind of project and so here is a much more direct breakdown of how you can support E's Cafe too!

• The crowdfunding campaign ends on the 24th March 11am.
• You can support various 'packages' through the website from ¥3,000, ¥10,000, ¥50,000, ¥100,000 and more.
• Go here: https://readyfor.jp/projects/11580/announcements

If you don't read Japanese well or the package options don't quite work for you, then no worries....BEFC is taking donations from members (and friends) --- And the club will match the amount received! Meaning we double it. We will then buy Crowd Funding Packages closest to the donations collected. We will aim to do this around March 22nd (Wed). BEFC Members can give their donations to any of the Captains.
If you want to donate via Credit Card or Paypal email the club and we'll send a Paypal Invoice to the amount of your donation.

You can also help by spreading the word about this project, over the internet, on social platforms and to other organisations who can make a post about it.

Here's a summary of links:

 - Para Sports Club Esperanza -  Organisation Homepage: http://parasc-esperanza.com
 - Para Sports Club Esperanza - Organisation Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CP.Soccer.Esperanza
 - Esperanza CP Soccer and Life - Football Team Homepage: http://www.npo-esperanza.org
 - Esperanza Next - School Day Care Service Facebook: www.facebook.com/esperanzanext.kawasaki
 - E's Caf Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/escafe.tama/
 - E's Cafe Website : http://es-cafe.net/
- E's Cafe Crowdfunding Project Page: https://readyfor.jp/projects/11580/announcements  

E's Cafe
Address: Ochiai 1-47 New Jersey Tama Center Building 8F, Tama City, Tokyo
Tel: 044-201-4552