Consumer co-ops offer childcare salon activities as part of their social initiatives by running salon for parents and children usually supervised by voluntary members with parenting skills.

On April 2015, a new support system was enforced in addition to the existing salon activity by 58 co-ops nationwide.

So far the childcare salon activities have received overwhelming recognition with actual figures showing that since 2007 (eight consecutive years), there have been an increase in parent-child participation and the number of places the activity had been held for 58 co-ops nationwide.

Responding to children’s poverty and isolation JCCU and 26 member co-ops are organizing “food bank” and “children’s cafeteria” activities as a means to provide a place for children to spend time together by engaging in activities such as cooking, eating and playing games.

In the fiscal 2015, 58 co-ops implemented the "child-rearing salon" activity with seven of them carrying out the new support system that were commissioned by the local government as the “local child care support project”.The activities were held in 527 places (previous year 111.4%), participated by 156,366 parentchild (same as previous year 102.4%). However, there was a slight decrease in the number of staff to run the activities and this becomes the future challenge. 

JCCU places importance to children’s happy future and will continue to offer child-rearing support through the cooperation of its member co-ops.