The Trust Youth Centre is a programme of the Amenity 2000 Association in Japan, started in 2013.
In Japan, there has yet to be a popular ‘heritage movement’ like that in the UK. Voluntary participation in National Trust activities and the importance of protecting historical buildings has yet to gain wide public awareness. At Amenity 2000 Association, we believe that Japan’s heritage consists of an extremely diverse range of buildings and areas of natural beauty. We feel it is our duty to prevent the irreversible loss of such treasures to our culture and preserve heritage sites wherever possible at a community level. It is our ambition to support the preservation of the past for future generations. This will be achieved by engaging young people through our Trust Youth (TY) Centre to promote the development of a National Trust movement, and to advocate wider accessibility to heritage sites by work at our property in Kobe. We aim to expand our TY Centre, to use heritage as a platform to engage in cross cultural and inter-generational exchange. In doing so, we aim to secure wider appreciation for the social and educational benefits of active participation with the historical and natural environment.