The spread of COVID-19 has prevented junior high schools across Japan from holding special activities, such as work experience events. In light of this situation, the Career Challenge Day On-Line-Meets* were held as an alternative education support program in December 2020, so that children would not lose opportunities for an education that is open to society.

One of Kajima's female architectural engineers participated in the program as a lecturer. Online lectures were delivered to some 340 students at three schools.

During lectures, she shared true stories related to Kajima's roles in society, the kind of work at construction companies, and the mind, role, and capabilities required for her job. In a Q&A segment, the students asked many different questions, such as challenges that the lecturer faced, setbacks that she encountered, and performance that Kajima raised overseas. Some students expressed interest in working in the construction industry in the future.

We hope that our online classes have provided students with opportunities to hear real stories from working adults and think about their future careers amidst the ongoing COVID-19 situation that prevents them from leading a normal school life.

* The Career Challenge Day is an online career education event hosted by CAREERLINK CO., LTD. and began as a project from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to assist education on reconstruction for junior high school students who lost opportunities to gain work experience due to the Tohoku earthquake.

On November 20, 2020, at the presentation ceremony of the Mécénat Awards 2020 held by the Association for Corporate Support of the Arts at the Hamamatsucho Convention Hall (Minato-ku, Tokyo), the Kajima Foundation for the Arts received the Mécénat Grand Award for sponsoring the Kajima Foundation for the Arts Awards.
Established in 1991, the Mécénat Awards honors companies and corporate foundations for outstanding activities in social creativity that are based on promotion of the arts and culture. This public commendation program aims to further enhance these activities by presenting awards.

Since 1994, the Kajima Foundation for the Arts has annually offered Kajima Foundation for the Arts Awards to research projects that produced extraordinary results with the grants given by the foundation every year. The foundation also holds workshops. These awards are currently seen as a major presence in the Japanese art community, and have helped many laureates obtain positions at universities and research institutions, or secure proposals to write books and deliver lectures. In this way, the awards bring a large leap to giving young researchers great leaps.

The awards are highly esteemed for having supported research in the arts for many years, for its contributions in nurturing young researchers, for bringing the spotlight to many talented people who support the art community, for improving the quality of research, and for contributing to the development of art culture as a whole.

* The Kajima Foundation for the Arts was established in 1982 and provides chiefly young and mid-level art researchers across Japan with grants for research in the arts, related publications, international exchange, and projects to deliver art lectures, aiming to nurture the arts and enrich Japanese culture. It has provided some 2,600 grants (2.06 billion yen in total) for 40 years since its establishment.