Hello, this is MHK_Studio!
I participated in Environmental Plaza Sapporo 2019, held at the Sapporo Dome on August 12 and 13.
This was our first external activity as Youth Econet.
We were invited to join by Mr. Usui from Advacom, and thanks to his support, we were able to exhibit at the event.
On August 11, we did the day-before preparations starting at 2:00 PM.
All we had to do was receive the posters, put them up, and adjust the placement of tables and chairs, but somehow it still drained a lot of energy…
August 12 was a public holiday, so many people came to the venue.
At the Youth Econet booth, we had just under or around ten visitors.
As expected, our name recognition is still low—while those interested in environmental issues were generally supportive, people with less interest didn’t really engage with the booth.
On August 13, which was a weekday, most visitors were parents with children.
Since Youth Econet doesn’t cater specifically to children, we had very few visitors that day.
However, we were lucky to have Pikotaro-san, a celebrity impressionist, and the artist group White Explosion, both of whom have ties to Hokkaido, visit our booth and leave comments after performing on the main stage!
I was hoping to raise awareness of Youth Econet by tapping into their strong influence—so I posted some tweets… and they got a lot of likes!
I feel like that helped spread the word a little. I’m really grateful!
What I felt throughout the event was that there are still very few people who actively want to support youth-led initiatives.
Of course, you could say it’s because we didn’t do enough to attract attention—but many people just glanced at the booth and kept walking, which honestly felt a bit lonely.
It was also a little disappointing to see that many of the other exhibitors didn’t have time to visit other booths.
(Though I myself only managed to visit them on the second day…)
There were so many people with perspectives different from my own—it felt like such a missed opportunity not to connect, learn, and share more.
Even so, I hope to keep participating in these kinds of events, not letting setbacks stop me, so that more people can come to know about this network.
