Announcing the 2023 SJA Founder Mine Sasaguri Service Award winner: Michiko Okuma!
SJA is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 SJA Founder Mine Sasaguri Service Award: Michiko Okuma! Congratulations, Michiko-san! おめでとうございます！
Michiko has been a long-time volunteer for SJA. She is a core member of SJA origami team and the lead teacher for the SJA monthly origami workshop. She has volunteered for many other SJA events, including: the origami table at Japan Day 2018, Bloody Origami Class at APS Traditional elementary school, Online Japan Day 2021, APS YEP online and in-person origami classes, Tanabata in 2021, Tea Ceremony in 2021, Spring Festival/Boroichi in 2022, Bon-odori in 2022, Sakura Matsuri in 2022 and 2023, and Pink in the Park in 2023 (for which she was featured on FOX News). Not only does she teach and demonstrate origami-making, but she also makes signboards for SJA events with calligraphy and has made origami poster boards for Pink in the Park and Sakura Matsuri. She is an active member of the Setagaya Committee, delivering swag goods from FOUA to Utsumi Farm in Setagaya and purchasing origami materials for future SJA events when in Japan. She also volunteered this year for APS Japanese teacher support, teaching origami and calligraphy to Yorktown and Washington-Liberty high school students. Her creative ideas and conscientious commitment to SJA, in addition to her talent in origami and calligraphy, have been instrumental in promoting SJA and its mission.
Michiko has done a great deal to sustain and enhance SJA’s origami activities during the last year and those preceding. She has been leading the monthly online origami session, providing ideas about to what to teach, and taking quality photos of sample origami figures for the SJA website. For the recent Cherry Blossom Festival celebrations at the National Landing program and at Sakura Matsuri Japan Street Festival, she created the cherry blossom tree panels—a small one for National Landing by herself and a huge one with the help of others. She also prepared lovely signs to be displayed at the SJA booth at the Street Festival. Her talent and dedication are indispensable for SJA.
Michiko has quietly attended almost all of SJA’s cultural events, managing an origami table at each of them, ever since in-person activity resumed in the summer of 2021. In 2022 and 2023, the Sakura Matsuri SJA booth was very crowded, especially at the origami table. Furthermore, Michiko assists with online origami classes and the online exchanges between youth in Arlington and in Setagaya. In addition, she has attended Setagaya Committee meetings regularly this past year and visited Setagaya’s mayor last summer on SJA’s behalf. Lastly, she was a reliable supporter of SJA’s very first Japanese conversation classes in Arlington in the winter of 2019, even though she had to commute from D.C. to volunteer. Michiko is the kind of the volunteer who makes SJA’s new and ongoing initiatives a success.
So once again, a great big congratulations and thank you to Michiko Okuma! SJA is honored by your dedication and looks forward to continuing to work with you in the future!