Mioi Nakayama, Part 2
Powerless feeling over poverty inspires action

Mioi Nakayama (second from right) with a classmate from the international school she attended in Munich, Germany.

Mioi Nakayama

Born in Hiroshima in 1977. After graduating from Rikkyo University, she worked at the Japan International Center for the Rights of the Child (JICRC). In 2002, she went to India. In 2005, she became involved in a photo project to help draw attention to the issue of child labor, and this led to the founding of the Bornfree Art School. As well as serving as Bornfree's co-director, a role she assumed in 2010, she is responsible for the children's dance training. She lives in Bangalore, India.

My parents were in their 20s when the Vietnam War was being fought and they became pacifists, opposed to military action and nuclear arms. I remember, from the time I was a young child, taking part in meetings and events with them that sought to promote peace.

The classes in peace education that I took in my junior high and high school days in Hiroshima were very enriching. We not only learned about the damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a result of the atomic bombs, and the ground battle in Okinawa, but also Japan's history and our responsibility as an aggressor. This involved the historical facts in which Japan slaughtered the people of neighboring Asian nations and forced the women to serve as sexual slaves.

When I was 16, my mother was doing some research in Europe so I lived in Munich, Germany for a year. While I was there, I had the chance to visit old concentration camps and museums. My international school also took a school trip to England. On that trip, I learned about poverty in England and that experience inspired me to choose sociology for my major when I entered university.

When I was a junior in college, I went to Berlin, Germany and studied about issues involving immigrants and I made a trip to Turkey as well. Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, shines with Islamic culture, but what drew my attention was the street children who would approach the tourists. During my week-long stay there, I became friends with two sisters and I invited them to have lunch with me on my last day. I was happy while we were eating lunch together, but the moment we left the restaurant and parted, I remember feeling so powerless, thinking how they had to return to their life on the street. At the same time, I felt strongly that I wanted to do something, I had to do something.

After I returned to Japan, I joined an NGO that was working to address issues involving child labor. I spent many days there learning about poverty and development. As I grew closer to graduating from college, I was interested in going on to graduate school in order to work at the United Nations or at an international NGO in the future. However, when I applied to a graduate program at a university in New York, I was told that I first needed an experience in the field.

An older colleague at the NGO where I was working advised me: "Go to India." And so I made up my mind. In 2002, I set foot on the soil of Mahatma Gandhi's nation. India has the largest number of child laborers in the world and I wanted to learn about these children.

From my first day in India, I saw children working and children living in the streets. But because of the language barrier, I didn't have the confidence to approach them and speak to them.