Anzu Hara 

Anzu immigrated to Canada in 1999 from Chiba, Japan. She has been a devoted volunteer and a community leader at various JCCC events for over 20 years, facilitating cultural awareness among Japanese Canadian children and families.

She is one of the founders of the Family Talks Forum (FTF, since 2001), a networking and support community for newcomer Japanese parents, which has become the largest Japanese parents’ group in the Shin-Nikkei community, serving over 1,500 Japanese-speaking families. Anzu has been serving as a chief Sewanin (care-taker), taking leadership in membership development/administration/community engagement. 

In 2015, as president of New Japanese Canadian Association (NJCA), Anzu played an important role in merging the JCCC and NJCA, and establishing a new committee, NJCC (New Japanese Canadian Committee), under the JCCC. During the merge, she took on the role of being NJCC’s first chair with a focus on supporting events, cultural heritage developments, and policy for the multigenerational community of post-war immigrants. 

Anzu believes in the importance of intergenerational connections, which will nurture a healthy identity and succession of the Japanese language/culture among future Japanese Canadian generations. She looks forward to promoting and fostering Kizuna in the Nikkei society, and she whole-heartedly believes that JCCC is the best place for her to do so.