Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Place & Catering: THE CORE KITCHEN/SPACE
Participants: 121 people (including guests and volunteers)
Pro-bono support: Wild Tame (welcome video) / Satoshi Aoki (photos) / Nayalan Moodley (video)

Last week, we celebrated one more year of positive impact with our community at our 2025 Winter Party, generously sponsored by KEEN- a continuous partner and believer of our mission. This year’s event was especially meaningful as we welcomed the highest number of program graduates and care workers, whose presence allowed guests to truly see and feel the long-term impact of our programs.

The theme of the evening was Collaboration. With a stronger foundation, Mirai no Mori was able to partner with more individuals, companies and organizations in 2025. We explored new and creative forms of collaboration, expanding and deepening the support we provide to campers, Leaders in Training, and graduates.

The event officially started with a welcome from our Executive Director Kozue Oka and a heartfelt toast by our Chair Daniel Cox who spoke about the power of community to the room filled with camp staff, corporate sponsors, individual donors, program partners and first-time guests.

Next came a highlight of every Winter Party: the program graduate speech, an opportunity for everyone to hear directly from someone who has experienced Mirai no Mori from childhood through adulthood. This year’s graduate shared how he expanded his views and strengthened his mindset through Mirai no Mori, and his goal to become an adult who supports children the way others supported him. (For those interested, please find the full script at the bottom of this blog)

With Christmas music playing in the background, guests enjoyed the night with drinks, food, and conversations with both new and familiar faces. Color-coded name tags based on each person’s involvement with Mirai no Mori made introductions easy and sparked many new connections.

Towards the end of the evening came our True or False Game, where guests learned fun facts about Mirai no Mori’s programs this year. The winner took home a KEEN voucher, kindly donated by our long-time sponsor whose employee volunteers also joined the event. We then moved on to the top raffle prize draws, featuring amazing gifts donated by Mitake Race Rafting Club and IHG Hotels & Resorts, followed by two original artworks painted by a program graduate who proudly drew the winners on stage.

Before the final segment, we shared a warm video message from our co-founder Jeff Jensen, currently overseas. His words reminded everyone of Mirai no Mori’s beginnings and the many people who continue to shape its future.

To close off strong, we invited all nine graduates on stage to share their reflections on the new year. They spoke about a goal for 2026, and chose one Mirai no Mori camper value they want to focus on in the coming year (Courage, Kindness, Leadership, Respect and Responsibility). We even had a special message from a graduate currently living in the UK for a study abroad program, who everyone was happy to hear from!

Some of their reflections included:

“I will be graduating from vocational school early next year and starting my career. I want to work on my Responsibility as a member of society and begin this next chapter with strength.”

“I want to continue working on Respect. I started working full time this year, and now speak with people from many different backgrounds. I want to have an open mind and be grateful for all the opportunities I receive.”

“I want to build my Courage. This past year brought many changes in my life, but I still have the goal of helping people. Even if my career path shifts, I want to have the courage to stay true to that goal and make it real.”

After the graduate reflections, we held the full raffle prize announcements. This year, we had the largest number of raffle prizes in Winter Party history, with a wide variety of items from many supportive donors and many smiles from prize winners!

Thank you to KEEN for sponsoring this celebration of impact, and thank you to everyone who spent the evening in support of our mission. We are eternally grateful for every person who has gotten involved with us in all capacities, and look forward to continuing to grow our diverse, inspiring and fun community in the years to come!

“We have very little chance to see the children once they leave the care home, so being able to reconnect with them at an event like this was amazing. Seeing them speaking on stage with confidence and smiles was truly heartwarming. I’m really grateful for this experience and for being able to be part of this event.” by care worker

“This was such a lively and fun event, and it’s incredible to see how many people are part of Mirai no Mori. I’ve been to a few programs before, but I had no idea how many people were actually supporting and thinking about the children.” by care worker 

“It was impossible to stop smiling during the graduate reflections! Seeing how much each of them has grown in confidence and hearing their hopes for the future reminded me once again of the impact we are making.” by camp staff 

⭐️ Graduate Speech⭐️

Good evening, my name is Kazuki, and I am a graduate of Mirai no Mori. I am currently a first-year university student studying economics and business.

Today, I would like to talk about two things: one, the most impactful lessons I learned from collaborating with many different people as a Mirai no Mori program graduate, and two, what lies ahead for me.

In June of this year, I was invited as a guest speaker for an “Awareness Talk” event in collaboration with Morgan Stanley, where more than 100 Morgan Stanley employees participated. The speakers were three of us: myself; Makoto, another graduate who lived in the same care home as me; and Taeko san, who used to be one of the care workers of that home. Each of us spoke from our different perspectives, as children and as a care worker, about life in a care home and how we grew through our experiences with Mirai no Mori.

Not only was it an exciting challenge for me to be a guest speaker, but this public speaking experience also gave me many new insights. I learned about the struggles and conflicts that the care workers faced back when I lived in the facility but had no idea about, as well as the worries that Makoto and the other children were dealing with at the time. Reading the feedback from employee volunteers after the event also made me realize once again how strong the remaining prejudices and misunderstandings about children’s care homes still are, and how few people actually understand who the children are and what kinds of support they receive. Through this experience, I strongly felt that I want Mirai no Mori’s activities to reach even more people, so that prejudices and misunderstandings about children’s homes can be reduced even a little, and so that all children, just like I once did, can have the chance to pursue their own dreams and goals.

With these realizations in mind, I would like to talk about how I see my future.

Right now, I don’t have a clear idea of what job I want or what exactly I want to become in the future. But I do have a clear image of the kind of adult I want to be. I want to become someone like Kozue, super staff, the sponsors, and the care workers- someone with the strength and heart to support children’s dreams and goals.

Thanks to the support from all of you, I am able to stand on this stage today and speak with confidence.

In the future, I hope to shift from being the one who receives support to being someone who can give support to others. Of course, I know I am still far from reaching the level of all of you here, so I will start by taking on everyday tasks one by one and doing my best.