Ehime

The Kameoka Festival is held near Shikoku Operations every October, and many Taiyo Oil employees of all ages carry the mikoshi palanquins as they enjoy interacting with, and deepening exchanges with the people in the local community.

Every year, employees join the local villagers in a social gathering to enjoy viewing cherry blossoms. Since 2012, we have also participated in the local cherry blossom tree planting group.

Taiyo Oil provides an exhibit mainly on its forest volunteer work at a local cultural festival held every year. This is used as an opportunity to directly introduce the Company’s activities such as environmental activities to the local community.

The Company has been participating in “Kawaranu Ai Kikuma,” an event held every year since 2005 based on the theme of “A Town of Energy, Tiles and Mandarin Oranges.” This participation is aimed at invigorating the town of Kikuma, communicating with local residents, and conveying the appeal of the Company.

Junior employees and so on living in company housing and dormitories participate in the Kameoka Autumn Sports Day for local residents every year.

At Shikoku Operations, employees volunteer to clean the coast and roads near the plant.

Taiyo Oil has been carrying out “Operation Hitonowa (Circle of People)” which involves raising banners along National Route 196 in front of Shikoku Operations for the National Traffic Safety Campaign in autumn, and thereby asking people in vehicles passing by to drive safely.

In response to a request from Kameoka Elementary School, we welcomed their students to explore our Shikoku Operations (through a plant tour) as part of the “Getting to Know the Town’s People Better” home economics class. (September 2012)

Children from Dogo Nursery School (31 children) were welcomed for a plant tour as part of their social studies field trip. (November 24, 2016)

Shikoku Operations was opened up for a tour as a Ehime company in order to cooperate with the “Social Studies Tour for Adults,” which is run by the NHK Matsuyama Culture Center with the aim of providing basic lessons on economics through tours of companies in the prefecture. (December 2005)

In response to requests from high schools in the prefecture, we accept students for work experience at Shikoku Operations as part of their classes on “thinking about lifestyle and direction through work experience related to interests and career paths.”

At the request of Kikuma Junior High School, every year, Shikoku Operations accepts students from that school for work experience as part of vocational-experience learning for “learning about the difficulties of living in society and lifestyle habits.”

In response to a request from Hadano Minami Junior High School, four second grade junior high school students were accepted for work experience at the Hadano Service Station of our affiliate Taiyo Oil Sales Co., Ltd.
The work experience is aimed at encouraging students to think about what it means to work, use the experience for choosing their future career path, and behave appropriately as members of society.

Taiyo Oil supports the “Elementary School Attendance Protection Team,” which is a regional contribution activity of the Ehime Mandarin Pirates. This activity involves players from the Mandarin Pirates visiting elementary schools in Ehime Prefecture in order to carry out “school attendance protection activities” such as “giving guidance on traffic safety” and “engaging in greetings.” The elementary schools that participate in the activities are given crosswalk-safety flags and banners printed with SOLATO-kun and the Ehime Mandarin Pirates character “Mappy,” in the hope that these items can help support safety guidance for children as they commute to and from school on a day-to-day basis.

In the activities, the Ehime Mandarin Pirates players teach children at kindergartens and nursery schools in Ehime Prefecture about how to throw balls and the enjoyment of ball games.

The participants, children from junior high school baseball teams in Ehime Prefecture, have serious expressions on their faces as they receive instruction from a coach who was previously a star player of the Yomiuri Giants professional baseball team.

Taiyo Oil is a special supporter of the “Nankai Broadcasting Ladies Badminton Competition” hosted by Nankai Broadcasting Co., Ltd.

Taiyo Oil provides support for “GO-MIX!” beach-cleaning volunteer work hosted and managed by the local television and radio station Nankai Broadcasting Co., Ltd. (part of the Nippon TV group). This activity is linked with a two-hour radio program that is to broadcast live during beach cleaning activities in Ehime Prefecture. The activities are aimed at environmental conservation for the region, and approximately 100 volunteers, including Taiyo Oil employees, participate.

Taiyo Oil has supported the Ehime Marathon since FY2009.
Based on assistance related to sports, Taiyo Oil actively supports activities that help to promote the health of communities and vitalize local areas.

Since August 2007, Taiyo Oil has continued to participate in “corporate afforestation activities” undertaken by Ehime Prefecture.
“Corporate afforestation activities” refer to the activities in which Ehime Prefecture and relevant municipalities tie up with the companies actively addressing environmental preservation to promote the improvement of forests (watershed protection and prevention of disasters in mountainous land) within the prefecture. This also encourages interaction between corporations and local residents, and the aim is protecting and nurturing forests and living in harmony with them.
Taiyo Oil is the first company to have participated in this activity.
Taiyo Oil has carried out forest volunteer activities such as planting and thinning, and hands-on learning utilizing nature in the “Sun (Taiyo)-nurtured Forest of Imabari City” and has tried to increase interaction with the locals in Imabari and contribute to society and the community through these activities.

Taiyo Oil is working with Ehime Prefecture, Imabari City, and local residents to jointly promote forest regeneration activities.
In the “Sun (Taiyo)-nurtured Forest of Imabari City,” tree thinning and planting work are carried out each year on an alternating basis. As for planting work, volunteers from Taiyo Oil plant seedlings of cedar, hinoki cypress, zelkova, and ginkgo trees, and thus activities are carried out to make the forest “multi-storied.”
In November 2016, Taiyo Oil received a “CO2 absorption certificate” from Ehime Prefecture stating that the company reduced CO2 by 11 tons per year. (As of April 2017, a total of 508 people have participated in these activities.)

In the “Sun (Taiyo)-nurtured Forest,” in addition to volunteer activities such as thinning and planting, hands-on learning is carried out so that people can learn about with the utilization of materials from forest thinning and the magnificence of forests. This hands-on learning provides employee volunteers and their family members with the opportunity to contemplate approaches regarding the preservation of forest resources and the creation of a recycling-based society.
As part of regional contribution activities, Taiyo Oil provided benches, which are made from cedar wood harvested during tree-thinning hands-on learning, to Imabari City, and installs them at public facilities in the city.

The Company participates in volunteer activities in a group promoting “creation of towns with forests” formed by organizations including companies and local governments in Ehime Prefecture that are engaged in afforestation efforts.

This event was a workshop aimed at spurring the interest of Ehime Prefecture elementary school students in reading by providing them with the opportunity to get in touch with outstanding books. The event was held in conjunction with the “Ehime Shimbun Primary School Book Report Contest,” of which Taiyo Oil is the special sponsor.

Taiyo Oil has been supporting the Ehime Shimbun Primary School Book Report Contest since 2011. Book report entries are received from elementary school students in Ehime Prefecture, and an awards ceremony is held for winners of the Special Prizes (including the Taiyo Oil SOLATO Prize for Best Overall Report), Excellence Prizes, and Honorable Mention Prizes. Through supporting these activities, Taiyo Oil is aiming to improve the reading habits and writing skills of elementary school students.

Taiyo Oil has established a grant-type (as opposed to loan-type) “Taiyo Oil Scholarship” at Ehime University, for which it will donate 10 million yen each year from 2019 through 2023. This scholarship system has been created with the aim of developing an environment in which economic burdens on students are lessened so that they can devote themselves to their studies, and under the system, 500,000 yen will be given to selected students in order to cover the university’s annual tuition fee.

Taiyo Oil sponsors the Ehime performance of Shiki Theatre “Kokoro no Gekijo,” an event hosted by Butai Geijutsu (Performing Arts) Center. “Kokoro no Gekijo” performances are free-of-charge musicals performed by Shiki Theatre Company to which elementary school students from across Japan are invited. The aim is to use musical theater to convey “important life lessons” related to the value of life, the spirit of altruism, and the joy of mutual trust, and to thereby “realize a spiritually rich society.” Taiyo Oil approves of this initiative for the spiritual development of children and the building of an affluent society, and has thus been sponsoring performances under this project.