The Hirayama Ikuo Volunteer Center (WAVOC) Waseda University

“We encourage students to take a leading role in social action activities.”

The Hirayama Ikuo Volunteer Center (WAVOC) was established in 2002. WAVOC is responsible for promoting social activities,which is an important mission of Waseda University along with education and research.
In preparing students for present-day society with its various global problems, merely imparting knowledge at universities is not enough.Today’s students must be aware of the importance of social activities, not just knowledge, and be able to take the initiative in various activities. WAVOC provides a wide variety of work-study programs to help students gain this capability, offering experience of a variety of different social activities.

Waseda University aims to nurture its students to develop personal skills as the principles behind education and research. Personal skills are explained as follows; graduates from Waseda University should be able to blend into any community in the world,survive there, learn the values of the local community. Moreover, based on such experiences, the graduates should be able to contribute to any society such as their own hometowns, to a local community or a country to which they move, and to their own country or a private company in that country, and beyond this to a bigger region and international society through international institutions and global corporations. The personal skills that the university aims to nurture is the ability to unite and lead people with different values and cultural backgrounds and a strong desire to promote the happiness of the local people in any field.
Personal skills should be accompanied by a powerful intelligence and supple sensibility like two wheels of a cart. Powerful intelligence refers to the ability to tackle challenges that have no definite answer and to draw out an answer. The specialized education that the faculties provide and a program called University-wide Minor System form the basis for this. Supple sensibility relates to the ability to accept diversity in various circumstances and to unite and lead people sympathetically. WAVOC offers many different programs for nurturing a supple sensibility through volunteering, such as lectures as a basis for volunteer activities,
experience-based classes, workshops, activities both in Japan and overseas, and various other events. We provide our students with
opportunities to acquire their own supple sensibility in both theory and practice and in a cycle of the two.
Universities must change their functions toward a new era. WAVOC redefines the scope of and methods for volunteering and provides new volunteer activities as an educational program by incorporating research, education and practice in an integrated manner. WAVOC will support as many students as possible who hope to play active roles as real global leaders who have an appropriate set of personal skills.

Tatsunori MATSUI
Director of The Hirayama Ikuo Volunteer Center
Professor, Faculty of Human Sciences