About the Cause and KVH Cares
The Great Tohoku Earthquake occurred at 02:46 and 18 seconds on March 11th, 2011.
The consequences of this incident have been devastating, and as part of our support in helping to rebuild this region, KVH established “KVH Cares”, which conducts various programs to provide aid to those who have been affected.
Kenji Hioki, Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Services of KVH, visited parts of the affected region shortly after the Earthquake and Tsunami. “When I went to Sendai and saw the actual situation there after the earthquake, I was appalled by the scale of the disaster. At first, I was shocked to the point that I could not even imagine how we could possibly support and help the affected people.”
This sparked extensive internal discussion at KVH around the issue of how we could support the disaster-affected areas over a long-term period, rather than as a form of temporary support. There were great efforts made to conduct as many supportive activities as possible.
Within the first three months after the Earthquake, KVH has:
- Made donations to the Japanese Red Cross Society
- Provided free cloud services to businesses in the disaster-affected regions and reconstruction organizations that are contributing to the earthquake disaster relief efforts
Between the three months after the Earthquake and today KVH has:
- Supported reconstruction projects in Fukushima Prefecture in collaboration with residents of Naraha Machi who have been evacuated to Aizu Misato Machi due to the nuclear power plant incident
- Provided summer clothing to the children of Aizu Misato Machi
- Provided a shuttle bus with driver to support the transportation needs between the temporary housing areas and Aizu Misato Machi for Naraha Machi evacuees
- Held a BBQ party with people from Naraha Machi and Aizu Misato Machi
- Had a total of 29 employees, including senior management staff, participate in a variety of volunteer activities in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture
After six months of participating in various supporting activities, we have concluded that one of the most helpful and impactful forms of aid to assist with reconstruction from the earthquake is to support local businesses and work collaboratively with companies on Tohoku-based projects to help improve the local economy.
As KVH provides telecommunication, data center, cloud, and IT services, we investigated what kinds of opportunities we would be able to generate for local businesses in Tohoku by using our own resources.
The result was the KVH SaaS Application Contest.
