On November 3rd, the Osaka YMCA held its annual event, Tosabori Carnival where people involved with the Osaka YMCA get together to run stalls and do performances for the local community and to raise money for various community causes that the YMCA supports through its Christmas fund. It is done as one of YMCA activities aiming to "create a community that lives together in harmony".
As for the Global Department, we supported this event by giving an opportunity to Sunny Cafe, a student-run social enterprise, to step in and run its own stall on the first floor. Sunny Cafe presented by My Y Cafe (Global Department social enterprise cafe), provided delicious Vietnamese coffee to the guests and sold more than 200 cups by the end of the day. It was a great success.
We interviewed two students, Truong Thi Kim Phuong (Rose) and Pham Thi Ngoc Linh from the Sunny Cafe team.
Rose making delicious Vietnamese coffee
What is Sunny Cafe?
Rose: Sunny cafe is a student-run social enterprise of Osaka YMCA International College. Our purpose is to introduce Vietnamese coffee to our customers and donate our profits to people who need it. How did you come up with Sunny Cafe?
Linh: Sunny Cafe members are all from Vietnam. We adore our own Vietnamese coffee. So we all ended up agreeing to the idea of sharing our Vietnamese coffee to people who haven't experienced it yet. On top of that, we really wanted to help people in need by donating our profit from this project. How did you develop it?
Rose: With a general project idea of selling Vietnamese coffee in mind, we first took surveys from people at our school to understand their demands for coffee in general and how they like our particular coffee so that we can have their input in our products. What was the most difficult part of creating/ running it?
Linh: We had to overcome several problems while creating our Cafe. Well, we first didn't have or know where to get the money to start-up our business and when that was solved, we had no clue where we could sell our products! Things like these issues came up every time we took a step forward. However the most difficult part was to learn how to run a business and how to serve customers. On our launch day, we were out of control since we didn't know how to control the flow of the customers and run it smoothly. Nonetheless, with the help of such supportive friends and teachers that constantly looked out for us and gave us advice, we were able to take on each problem we faced and learn day by day.
What was the most fun part of creating/ running it?
Rose: The most fun part was when people started to notice and find out about us and our coffee and gave us good feedback, but the best times were our funny and silly moments together while creating and running Sunny Cafe. We had such great teamwork and teachers' support.
Linh attracting customers with her big smile
Who does Sunny Cafe help?
Rose: We first focused on this volunteer group called "Clover" which supports people that are blind.
We also decided to support West-Japan Flood Disaster Relief Campaign. For this event in particular, we donated our profits to My Y Cafe as a investment to them and to the Christmas donation which was the purpose of this Tosabori Carnival. How was it overall? How did you feel?
Rose: We were super busy the whole time . We sold 200 cups in total by the end of the day. We don't really care about the number of cups we sold or how much we made. We just enjoyed to support each other through great teamwork and how we are driven together to help others. What are you thinking of doing next/ What do you hope to do next with Sunny Cafe?
Rose: My dream is to expand this project. I probably want to start local in another country, but this won't happen with my team. I won't be able to do it alone. I will definitely need my team since Sunny Cafe can't be done without them.
Any other comments? Rose: Well... If there is anyone that are interested and would like to invest in Sunny Cafe, we are more than welcome to have your support!
Sunny Cafe members and volunteer students include: Truong Thi Kim Phuong (Rose), Tran Thi Kim Ngan (Grace), Pham Thi Ngoc Linh, Do Thi Kim Tuyen, Le Thi Van An, Nguyen Y Uyen, Lin Yi Chun, Vu Minh Tam, Tran Huy Long, and Wong Yiuting.