[Special Feature: Looking Toward CGS's 10th Anniversary]
Izumi NIKI
staff member, Support House Jomu, NPO
[The article below is the same as the article that appears in the sixteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.]
We are fortunate to have former RIAs who continue to be involved in our activities in various ways. One former RIA, Izumi Niki, tells us about her experience at CGS and how she applies it in her life today.
I first worked with CGS for a few months before it was founded in 2004 and later from 2006 to 2009 as an RIA. To be honest, before its establishment I never imagined that CGS would become the lively meeting place that it is today. Back then, we only had a room with half the space and only a big desk in the middle of it. But CGS has always been a place for diverse people, a place where no one is ever excluded.
When I was working at CGS, I was a graduate student and I gave birth to my second child. Writing my thesis while raising two children should have been difficult, but I only remember the good things about it. I think that's probably because at CGS I could express myself sincerely and at times have passionate discussions with my friends. It is only after leaving CGS that I have realized that such a place is extremely rare in society at large.
CGS is also a place that forges bonds between people. During my time there, I met many people, and they taught me (or hammered into me!) so much that I could not have learned from textbooks: human diversity; the idea that what is taken for granted in society is not necessarily "normal"; and how to make one's way through life step by step with the awareness that "the personal is also social"...
I am now working in the office of a women's support organization (Support House Jomu, NPO), which I first got to know through CGS. I endeavor to help make it a safe and secure place like CGS, where no one feels excluded and where I can grow as I meet and learn from diverse people. I also enjoy seeing how CGS touches so many people and continues to grow and develop with them.