AISIN offers environmental education programs to elementary school children in local communities.

In fiscal 2009, we administered a biological survey of Mt. Yatsuomote for students at Yatsuomote Elementary School in Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, to enable them to learn about the preciousness of nearby nature areas. For the survey we invited an expert in nepa hoffmanni^*1 -a protected species in the area-as an instructor, and were able to find more than 60 of nepa hoffmannis, surpassing our expectations.

We also cooperated with members of the local community to maintain the bamboo forests where the creatures live.

*1 Nepa hoffmannis are aquatic hemiptera insects in the nepidae family. They are flat and oblong, approximately 2.2 centimeters in length, with dark-brown skin. Their habitat is small streams and ponds of cold spring water and other low marshy places, and they are carnivorous, absorb their prey’s bodily fluids. Habitats for this species in Japan are rare.

Continuing from 2007, we held the Aisin Group Environmental Symposium in July 2008. In connection with the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10) in Nagoya in 2010, we made this symposium a venue for considering biodiversity and natural and rural forests.

We welcomed Hiroshi Yagyu, an actor and the chairman of the Wild Bird Society of Japan, to give a lecture on the topic of living with and learning from forests, and arranged a talk between Mr. Yagyu and Ayumi Iio, an editorial writer for The Chunichi Shimbun newspaper. Approximately 270 people attended, including AISIN employees and members of NPOs.

Moreover, since 2004 AISIN has been engaged in tree-planting efforts through the Aisin Children’s Forest Project with local children in the Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand, where forests are being depleted. In 2008, the final year of the five-year program, approximately 400 people planted 12,000 seedlings over 9 hectares. Participants included employees, their families, teachers and students from four local elementary schools, and other members of the local community.

Through this program, we have successfully planted a total of 60,000 trees across 45 hectares in a five-year period. Furthermore, we consider these programs to have given the many participating children a sense of the preciousness of the natural environment.