Pathfinder Foundation enters into dialogue with Nippon Foundation

Monday, 6 April 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

From left: Chairman of the Nippon/Sasakawa Foundation Yohei Sasakawa, Pathfinder Foundation Founder Milinda Moragoda and Japan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka Nobuhito Hobo The Founder of the Pathfinder Foundation, Milinda Moragoda, met with Chairman of the Nippon/Sasakawa Foundation Yohei Sasakawa at their Tokyo headquarters to discuss collaboration opportunities between the two organisations. The Nippon Foundation is the largest private foundation in Japan. Japan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Nobuhito Hobo was also present at the discussion. Sasakawa joined the Nippon Foundation as a trustee in 1981, served as President from 1989, and became Chairman on 1 July 2005. The foundation’s overall objectives include assistance for humanitarian activities, both in Japan and overseas, and global maritime development. Its philanthropic ideals embrace social development and self-sufficiency and it pursues these principles by working to improve public health and education, alleviate poverty, eliminate hunger and help the disabled. In the field of public health, Sasakawa has for over 30 years been dedicated to a global campaign to eliminate leprosy, working in close co-operation with the World Health Organization, governments, international organisations and NGOs. One prime example of his work is the decision to fund, between 1995 and 1999, free multi-drug therapy (MDT) for every leprosy-affected person in the world. Sixteen million people have been cured of the disease since MDT first became available in the 1980s. Sasakawa has described the elimination of leprosy as his life’s work and spends one-third of every year travelling around the world as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, a position he has held since 2001.