2022 Volume 34 Pages 41-56
Many community activities have stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this is not the case for the community development activities in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo. This paper examined in detail an intermediary organization and two civil society organizations. The intermediary organization held online symposiums to discuss problems of civil society organizations caused by the pandemic and provided a fund in response them. One of the civil society organizations established an online room to alleviate the loneliness of the participants, and it consequently allowed the participants to interact with people from other regions. Another organization had started food pantry in response to the newly emerging problem of poverty caused by the pandemic.
As a result, it confirmed that the activities not only actually continued, but also developed in a way that was responsive to the impact of the pandemic. The following factors were considered to have contributed to this flexible response to the crisis: 1) Each organization develops initiatives to deal with new issues in their daily activities and has a lot of experience, 2) The region has a multi-layered network and a variety of intermediary organizations. The flexibility of these activities and intermediary organizations can be considered to characterize horizontal community governance.
