The Fujifilm Group has been developing photographic culture since its foundation by promoting photographic entertainment, beauty, and emotion, as well as the importance of archiving photographs. In FY2018, we released various apps and services for smartphones, and they have now become important photographic tools. We suggest and offer new means to enjoy photographs in the era of smartphones. We also started our Premium Print Service to deliver high-quality silver prints from photographs taken by high-quality mirrorless and other digital cameras as “works of art.” A silver print provides an image with depth, rich tone, and a highly-defined gradation, a more sophisticated way to enjoy photographs than looking at them on the screen of a PC or smartphone. We are keen to utilize our expertise in photographic empowerment in various projects, including by being a main partner in the Homesha (Praise with Photo) project, to establish new child-raising practices that improve the self-esteem of children by displaying their photographs at home.
Fujifilm supports and cooperates with the Ghana Nutrition Improvement Project organized by The Ajinomoto Foundation. The project was organized in cooperation with government agencies in Ghana, the United Nations and international NGOs to market and promote the nutritional food supplement “KOKO Plus”*1 in the drive to support as many weaning-aged children in Ghana who are suffering from malnutrition. When photographs taken by instax were provided as a perk with the purchase of KOKO Plus, it triggered growth in the number of customers and proved effective in their continued use of KOKO Plus. This success prompted a request for Fujifilm’s support. In addition to improving nutrition among children in Africa, this activity resulted in promoting and spreading the joy of photography to make it easier to maintain children’s growth and normal daily life, and we are committed to supporting it in the future.
- *1 KOKO Plus: Nutritional food supplement developed exclusively for Ghana to improve the nutritional quality of Ghana’s traditional baby food known as “koko.” The product has been developed by Ajinomoto and its partners.
The Homesha (Praise with Photos) Project is an activity aimed at spreading a new child-raising practice aimed at building children’s self-esteem. An educational expert, Mr. Chikara Oyano, was its proposer, and the project was established with Fujifilm as the main partner. In the course of his career as an elementary school teacher, Mr. Oyano noticed that the homes of children who had high selfesteem were decorated with photographs. With the cooperation of brain scientist Mr. Kikunori Shinohara and developmental psychologist Ms. Kyoko Iwatate, studies were conducted on “praise with photos” through activities such as an awareness survey regarding self-esteem, demonstration experiments with Homesha and measurements of brain activity. The findings revealed that the level of self-esteem is higher for children in homes where photographs are on display than for children without photographs in their homes. The activities started in August 2018. In addition to publishing past survey findings on its website, workshops and events are being held to communicate a wide range of information on how to practice Homesha effectively and how to build children’s self-esteem.
In comparison with other industrialized nations, many children in Japan show a low level of self-esteem—an issue that is being studied by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to develop corrective measures. We are promoting Homesha in the hope that the number of confident children will increase.