ABOUT US

The Japanese Community Association (JCA) started as the Executive Committee of the Omikoshi Parade responsible for planning and executing the Omikoshi Parade Team at the 2012 Cairns Festival Parade.

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011, many of the Japanese community members in Cairns wanted to give a helping hand to the victims in any possible forms, even if we do live outside of Japan. We got together to organise a charity event to collect donations. In addition, a lot of local people lent us a hand by donating money and giving us warm encouragements.

We wanted to say thank you to those people who cared about Japan and supported them through our event. This is how we started the Omikoshi Parade project.

Our intention to participate in the parade was quickly spread by word of mouth, and nearly 400 people attended, including those who came from Japan. We all walked along the Esplanade to show our appreciation to the local community for having cared about our home country.

As a result, we won first prize in the 2012 Cairns Grand Parade!

Until then, we didn’t realize that there were so many people in our community who were willing to participate in community events. We, as the Executive Committee of the parade started to think that we should continue to provide more opportunities for people to be part of the community, and to enhance bridging between Japan, Australia and even the wider community in the world!

With the prize money that we won from the parade, we agreed to establish a community association group to make our wish come true. This is how JCA started.