Rei Hatayama
From the age of 0, I was placed at an infant nursery, and grew up in the foster care system until the age of eighteen. For these years, I experienced a variety of placements including large dormitory-style group home, small-middle sized home and family home. Until I graduated from junior high school, I utilized foster homes on weekends, where I was given the opportunities to live an ordinary “family life" with people whom I was able to call “mother” and “father”. While receiving scholarships and support from many people, I was able to enter a university where I could learn about social entrepreneurship, which I wanted to study. However, after I left foster care, between the ages of eighteen and twenty, I experienced the “two-year void”. I decided that I would never want any younger people to go through the “two-year void” that I experienced. So I began my activities as a foster youth. Thanks to many connections of people, I was able to work at a “youth support station” where I could utilize my experiences in my junior and senior years of college. I have been involved in supporting the independence and employment of foster youth as a “ibasho” (means “space where we can feel at home and be ourselves” in Japanese) program staff stationed at a part-time high school, as a dormitory mother at a dorm which promotes youth’s independence, and as as a “young caregiver project” staff. After that, I became a mother of two children. Now I know what its like to go through the hurdles of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and parenting as a foster youth. I came to think that it is part of my role to address these issues while using my own experiences.
Currently, I work for an NPO that supports foster parents and foster children while assisting area family homes. Through the activities of IFCA, in the aim of making all youth’s future brighter, I would like to continue to collaborate with my peer youth who are experts in foster care as survivors of the system and to advocate for all foster youth including the ones whose “voiceless voice” needs to be heard.
