On Sunday July 10, a field team of Women Help Women and Relief 2.0 paid a visit to an amazing an inspiring woman, a testimony of the resilient and unbreakable spirit of the Japanese women and the Tohoku survivors. This is the story told by Ann Sado.

Oikawa Denim Y.K. is a truly amazing company with Mrs. Hideko Oikawa as the visionary, entrepreneurial CEO, having an indomitable spirit in times of hardship and crisis as the Tsunami-Earthquake that hit this mountainous coastal region of Motoyoshi-cho, about 1 hour south of Kesennuma city itself.

Our fourth mission to Tohoku focuses in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture and is done in support of the Women Help Women initiative launched by the Global Summit of Women and lead by a group of Korean and Japanese business women.

Our good friend Eden Quayle has shared an inspiring video of their recent Tohoku Volunteer Trip on June 22nd - 26th 2011. If you like it, you can send the url http://go.relief20.com/tohoku to pass it on to others or use the links below to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in or via e-mail.

Arrived in Ishinomaki around noon and had lunch at a Chinese Restaurant. We were supposed to have a meeting with Abe-san, the female leader, but she got an unexpected meeting with city councilors and was occupied the whole day. We took the members around the neighborhood and the city instead.

Our third mission to Ishinomaki and Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, from Friday June 24 to Sunday June 26 takes place in collaboration with the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan.

One of the most common attitudes and mistakes in field operations happens when both volunteers and local stakeholders develop a sense of confidence and safety as they get used to the disaster area. Many assume that the worst has already happened: "it's unlikely another earthquake/tornado/flood/storm will hit the same area twice or anytime soon" seems to be a logical reasoning. And so, relief teams stop wearing their masks, gloves, eye protection and go into field activities without emergency survival kits, personal water drinking supplies, nutrition bars or communication devices. After all, they are just minutes or an hour from camp, right?