Isetan Soleil & PESO

If u watched the video above, can you guess the lady is a person with Intellectual (Learning) Disabilities?Visited Isetan Soleil yesterday. It's a special subsidary of Isetan. What's special subsidary? Well.... in Japan there's a law that says companies must have at least 1.8% of Persons with Disabilities working in their company. Failing to fulfil that the companies are fined at least 50,000 yen per person per month. So some companies formed special subsidaries where they hired only PWDs to work there. Isetan Soleil has 28 PWDs working there, 26 of them have Intellectual Disabilities and 2 with physical disabilities.
Folding gift boxes. Noticed the cardboard in the middle with words? It's called an assitive device to help make sure the box is properly folded. The staff uses assitive devices to train the employees here in various jobs. Kind of what we do in United Voice.

The instruction printed out for reference.

Doing stamping..... can you imagine doing stamping the whole day... sure got a few that's out of place but this workers can stamp it perfectly!

Guy with the tie is a Job Coach.

Pasting sticker in the Isetan brochure

Matsuura-san explaning about the folding of the paper. For ladies who wants to try out clothes at Isetan so their makeup does not smear the clothes.

That's Masakuni Shioden, President of Isetan Soleil. This is an important guy. He's the one who suggested this idea. Previously most of the work here are done by sales or accounting people (with no disabilities) and it's taking a lot of thier time and he formed this subsidiary to do all the so call "background" work. Now the PWDs have employment and the sales & accounts people can concentrate on doing thier job. Win-win situation! Here he's showing us the cards used by 1 of the employees who has no verbal skills. Blue card says "I've finish my work". Red card says "I've made a mistake". See.... what disabilities? She can speak through the cards.

Sorting out credit cards bills

The workplace

Went to Isetan to see the products. Keiko has to specially buy a handkerchief so we can see the packaging with the ribbon.
After Isetan we went to the Public Employment Security Office (PESO) or now known as "Hello Work" Job seekers come here to find jobs. And they have a section for PWDs. This computer is especially for PWDs to navigate and find job. There are jobs that's specifically for PWDs. Non-PWDs cannot apply. How cool is that!
The usual photo taking session in fron of the PESO office. The lady on the right is in charge of employment for PWDs.