October 2026 Updates and Activity Report

Thank you as always for supporting Waffle’s activities.

In September, AI Changemaker was held in Yonezawa and Obihiro, and our special event with BOSE was a great success. In each region, we were there to witness the moments when middle and high school students began to feel “maybe I could do this too.”

And the new season of Technovation Girls 2027 is about to begin.

In this issue, we are also sharing information on recruiting participants and volunteer mentors. We hope you will read to the end, and share it with those around you.

Technovation Girls 2027 Is Finally Here! Now Recruiting Participants

Registration for Technovation Girls 2027 has opened. It is a six-month program in which participants solve familiar social issues using ideas and technology. “Six months is long.” “It’s a little scary, and I don’t really understand it.” It is only natural for someone seeing this program for the first time to feel this way. Because nearly 2,000 middle and high school students have taken part so far, we would like you to hear a full explanation before you apply. We hold information sessions on an ongoing basis, so please feel free to join one first. This season too, we look forward to welcoming many middle and high school students from all 47 prefectures. Parents and school staff, please let the middle and high school students around you know about this opportunity.

Website: https://technovation.waffle-waffle.org/

Application form: https://share-na2.hsforms.com/1TaPn-pogSvKXFKGOXfMgHwcjgs8

Information session registration form: https://share-na2.hsforms.com/1DEgKWmhQQTCHb5qOaCcp3Acjgs8

Waffle AI Changemaker Held in Yonezawa and Obihiro

“Waffle AI Changemaker” is a program in which female and non-binary middle and high school students take on the challenge of developing AI-powered products themed around their region’s industries and characteristics. In September, it was held in two locations: Yonezawa City (Yamagata Prefecture) and Obihiro City (Hokkaido). Moving from “users” of technology to “creators” of it, students in each region spent time looking at their own towns with fresh eyes.

Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture (September 6)

Eleven middle and high school students from five schools in Yonezawa took part. The theme was “Yonezawa’s regional assets.” Participants worked through a lecture, a career talk by a woman engineer working in Yonezawa, and app development using generative AI. In half a day, four teams produced four apps. One visualizes the locations, equipment, and roles for imoni (taro stew) gatherings. Another encourages participation in the Uesugi Snow Lantern Festival by turning snow into a regional attraction. A third is a career app that lets users find local companies and schools from fields they are interested in. Every team came to the same realization: “People from outside the prefecture don’t even know what it is.” It was time spent developing an eye for seeing one’s own hometown from the outside. Participants shared comments such as, “I thought I couldn’t do programming, but I was able to make something like the foundation of an app, so I came to feel there is nothing I can’t do” (first-year high school student), and “I had a strong image that programmers are men, but the instructors this time were women who used AI with great skill, and they were so cool” (third-year high school student).

Our heartfelt thanks to the people of Yonezawa City, who lent their support, and to everyone at NEC Personal Computers, Ltd., who provided the venue and also took the stage for the career talk.

Obihiro City, Hokkaido (September 12–13)

In Obihiro, a city known for agriculture, 14 female and non-binary middle and high school students from eight schools gathered. In addition to building apps with generative AI, all participants also took on the challenge of making hardware. It became two days of making things with their own hands, not only on a screen. A team that tried to improve the environment of a cowshed with hardware struggled with where and how to measure temperature and humidity, and went to see a person who actually runs a dairy farm. By hearing their problems directly, the team rethought what to build. A third-year high school student who said, “I had been interested in agriculture for a long time, but I thought it had nothing to do with programming,” found that both share “problem solving” as a common thread, and applied that to making her own app.

In the post-event survey, participants’ sense that “I think I could do this myself” rose from an average of 2.67 to 4.58.

Our heartfelt thanks to the co-hosts, the Hokkaido Digital School Festival Contest Executive Committee and Fujizemi; to Miori Sagara of Baobab Co., Ltd., who took the stage as a speaker; and to Hokkaido, the Hokkaido Board of Education, Obihiro City, and the Obihiro City Board of Education, which lent their support.

BOSE × Waffle Special Event Report

On September 27, we held our second special event, following last year’s, at BOSE’s Tokyo office. A total of 22 participants, 17 middle school students and 5 high school students, gathered from across the country, including Kagawa, Hiroshima, Osaka, and Nagano. In addition to building a rhythm game app with p5.js, the day let participants experience the world of “sound × technology” with all five senses, including hands-on demonstrations of car speakers and noise-canceling technology. In a career talk by two women engineers from BOSE, the message that “you can go into the IT world even if you come from a humanities background” resonated strongly with the high school students, who are about to choose between humanities and sciences. We would like to thank everyone at BOSE for their warm and wide-ranging support, from providing the venue and supporting the technology demonstrations to facilitation by employee volunteers.

Waffle AI Leadership Program Community Event Held

On Saturday, September 5, we held a community event for female and non-binary university and graduate students at the office of Kyndryl Japan K.K. (Roppongi, Tokyo). The program centered on a panel talk by women leaders working in the technology industry, “In an Age Without Answers, How Are Leaders Developed? AI × Women’s Career Stories,” along with a workshop to learn about leadership types and time for participants to interact with one another. The Waffle AI Leadership Program will finally get underway in late October. Employees of Kyndryl Japan will accompany participants as mentors for four months.

See how the event went here.

Kumiko Morita, Director of Waffle, Speaks at Science Council of Japan Public Symposium

Kumiko Morita, Director of Waffle, spoke at the Science Council of Japan public symposium “In the Age of AI, Who Is the Future Fair For? — Thinking with High School Students About Gender, Minorities, and Career Paths,” in a talk titled “Is AI Neutral? — How to Engage with AI When Choosing Your Path.”

Based on the results of a test examining how generative AI’s career advice changes depending on the gender of the person asking, she spoke about the danger that possibilities may narrow without our realizing it. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Science Council of Japan for once again giving us this valuable opportunity, and to the fellow speakers who joined us on stage.

Sayaka Tanaka, CEO of Waffle, Speaks at NoMaps2026

Sayaka Tanaka, CEO of Waffle, spoke in the “Gender Investment That Changes Society” session at NoMaps2026, an urban innovation festival held mainly in Sapporo. When people talk about a gender lens, topics such as “women entrepreneurs” and “the ratio of women in management” tend to come up, but it is a theme that touches every field, including digital, energy, and care work. Tanaka said that in the care economy, which is expected to grow, economic independence, regular employment, and income should also be included among the evaluation indicators, so that women’s jobs do not become fixed in low-wage, non-regular employment. It was a session that conveyed the momentum to start, from Hokkaido, a collaboration in which NPOs design KPIs based on their expertise and financial professionals take care of the funding.

Announcements

[Happening November 4] Technovation Girls Volunteer Mentor Information Session (for Corporate Representatives)

Technovation Girls is recruiting working professionals as mentors to support app development by teams of female middle and high school students across the country. We will hold an online information session for corporate representatives who are considering creating volunteer opportunities for their employees, introducing the mentor role, the nature of the activities, and how employees are matched with teams. Please consider it as an opportunity for your employees to learn something new and contribute to society.

Event Details

Date & Time: Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 12:00 PM–1:00 PM

Format: Online

Eligible participants: Corporate representatives

Details and registration available here.

Request for Support Toward Certified NPO Status

Every program introduced in this newsletter — AI Changemaker, Waffle Club, and Technovation Girls — is free to participate in. This is so that opportunities reach students wherever they live and whatever their financial circumstances. What makes this possible is your donations.

Waffle is currently working toward obtaining “Certified NPO” status. To obtain certification, we need to meet the requirement of receiving donations of 3,000 yen or more from at least 100 people per year, which also serves as an indicator that Waffle is an organization supported by the public. Achieving this certification will make donations tax-deductible, making it easier for more people to support our activities.

Just 56 more donors to reach our goal of 100!

Would you join us in creating the moment when someone who thought “technology has nothing to do with me” realizes “maybe I could do this too”?

Details on donations and support available here.

Introducing the Volunteers Who Support Waffle — Fujizemi Members Provide Strong Support at AI Changemaker in Obihiro

Waffle’s activities are made possible through the support of many people.

At AI Changemaker in Obihiro, held on September 12 and 13, the members of Fujizemi gave us tremendous cooperation as co-host. Fujizemi is a self-organized study group where university and vocational school students across Hokkaido, regardless of university, department, or generation, come together to learn digital literacy and problem-solving skills from one another. They continue activities that support digital education in Hokkaido through student-led efforts, such as programming workshops for elementary and middle school students and training courses for student programming mentors. This time, Yoshihiro Fujisawa, who leads Fujizemi, and six Fujizemi mentors drove about three hours from Sapporo and accompanied participants as mentors for two days.

Without the help of the Fujizemi members, the Obihiro session would not have been possible. Thank you so much to everyone at Fujizemi!

Message from a Waffle Member

Chikako Masaki, Partnership Team of Waffle

Thank you for always supporting Waffle’s activities. From summer into autumn, we visited many regions for AI Changemaker. In September, I went to Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture. I was struck by how the middle and high school students there took a serious fresh look at local events that had always felt ordinary to them, such as the “imoni gatherings” and the “Snow Lantern Festival,” as themes for their apps.

“People from outside the prefecture don’t even know what it is.” From the moment they realized this, the participants’ perspective began to change. By looking at their own region objectively, they saw its strengths and challenges again, and that led to a shift in feeling toward “maybe I can do something too.” We have witnessed such moments in each region. Holding these sessions across the country would not be possible without the cooperation of local governments, companies, and schools. Every time I meet people who share the wish to “bring opportunities to the students of our own region,” I feel that this work is supported by many hands.

From October, the new season of Technovation Girls 2027 also begins. We kindly ask for your continued warm support of Waffle.