Consumer co-ops offer child rearing support as part of co-op members voluntary circle activities by running salon for parents and children to encourage children’s free activity and interchange as well as parent’s spontaneous mutual learning usually supervised by voluntary members with parenting skills.

In 2014 fiscal year, “child rearing salon” was held in 57 co-ops across the country with about 150,000 parent-child participation.

To offer quality of service and improve skills of the child care salon staff exchange meetings are held once a year by inviting a resource person to give lectures and advice on child parenting.

On March 7 a meeting was held in Miyagi Coop Cultural Center “With” where 87 volunteer staff from child-rearing salon from 27 prefectures took part.

The resource person was YAMAGUCHI Keiko who lectured under the title “the power of listening”. She emphasized that at the child rearing salon the way to listen is important in order to meet the requirements of parent-child.

Participants expressed feeling of satisfaction saying they had a great experience through comments such as “I will try to immediately practice what I learned", "it was a great learning session especially learning while moving the body,"etc.

Co-ops effort in this activity aims at supporting the society and the community to think that “child rearing is pleasant” especially in this present generation where there’s decline in childbirth and the burden of raising children in Japan.