Japan’s youth community for geography, GIS, and geospatial learning
Curiosity, straight into the future.
Youth GEO Japan is a learning community where young people in Japan explore geography, GIS, and geospatial information, teach one another, and address social and local challenges.
Vision:
Curiosity about geography has the power to transform society and open up the future.
Youth GEO Japan aims to empower young people who understand geography—a key to today’s world—to exercise leadership and create positive change in society.
Our Approach:
By creating a cycle of discovering, thinking, creating, and connecting, we help young people take the first step toward applying their geographic curiosity in society.
We provide a place where members can pursue their curiosity while collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds.
What We Do:
Creating a first encounter
We introduce young people—including junior-high and high-school students—to the excitement and possibilities of geography.
Broadening perspectives
Through talks and events with government, industry, and academia, we explore how an interest in travel, nature, and geography can grow into study, a career, or a way to address social challenges.
Turning ideas into experience
Through hackathons and study sessions, members use GIS and other geographic tools to visualize ideas and turn them into tangible experiences.
Building an environment
We connect young people with companies and organizations, creating an environment where geographic curiosity can help shape future paths.
We are a community of young people who believe in the possibilities of geography.
Observing landforms while traveling or imagining how a city developed—these are all part of geography.
Geospatial information also powers familiar tools such as the map applications we use every day.
Geography offers a spatial perspective for understanding complex issues across disciplines. It can act as a hub between fields and help us approach society from perspectives grounded in real places.
Yet precisely because geography is so broad, its value is still not widely understood. In Japan, many people stop studying geography after high school, while structured higher education and connections to specialist careers remain limited. We want to serve as a bridge and expand the possibilities available to both young people and geography.
We want to make the value of geography more visible in society and continue creating new signposts for the future.
Youth GEO Japan was born from that ambition: a community where young people who love geography can take on the future together.
Join Us!!
Youth GEO Japan is looking for new members. You can propose ideas that match your interests and strengths, then work with others to bring them to life. Members also have opportunities to meet professionals working with GIS. Anyone who wants to connect geography and GIS with practical work is welcome.
Activities
Our representative, from Tokyo, studied GIS at Hokkaido University and a graduate school in the UK before moving into consulting.
A human-geography master’s student from Chiba who went to Sweden to study urban policy.
A member from Hiroshima who earned a geography master’s degree in the UK and now works in real-estate sales with an interest in regional revitalization.
Around ten members in total, including a 3D GIS graduate student, a landscape-design student, engineers, and the president of an urban-space company.