Grant Activities

The Toyota Foundation's founding philosophy is "to contribute to the realization of a human-oriented society for the sake of greater human happiness." To broadcast this philosophy to society through its grant programs as a more practical message, the Foundation sets "realizing a sustainable society" and "community revitalization and coexistence" as common goals of its three publicly solicited grant programs.

"Realizing a sustainable society" is an important theme for the international community as it addresses such issues as the finite nature of resources and environmental problems. It will help to promote partnership (collaboration/cooperation) with other foundations in Japan and with overseas and international organizations.

With society facing a variety of issues, the aim of "community revitalization and coexistence" is to create richly dynamic, living communities by focusing on people's efforts to support one another.

Grant Programs

Grant Program for Community Activities

Under the basic theme of "Forming a Sustainable Framework Within the Locality: Toward a New Community of Self-support and Symbiosis," this program supports ambitious projects with local residents as the main actors creating frameworks that will lead to concrete solutions to issues their communities face in the course of their revitalization and advancement. There are three categories; (A) revitalizing the local community, (B) promoting symbiosis in the community, and (C) fostering young generations to carry the community forward. This program is limited to activities in Japan.Available only in Japanese.

Constituent Programs: Grants for Community Activities

Asian Neighbors Program

The Toyota Foundation has relaunched the Asian Neighbors Network Program, which has run for six years, as the Asian Neighbors Program. This fiscal year the program is soliciting practical, problem-solving projects premised on the importance of networks.

Under the basic theme of "Toward Community Formation Based on Mutual Reliance and Collaboration," this program solicits practical projects that aim to resolve the issues faced by Asian communities from the perspectives of "relationships with nature" and "relationships with people." It supports practical projects in the fields of "relationships with nature" and relationships with people ("culture" and "social systems") that incorporate new viewpoints, energy, and knowledge while still respecting traditional cultures and wisdom, such as efforts to promote the creation of communities by forming networks with neighbors and to eliminate obstacles to network and community development.

Constituent Programs: Asian Neighbors Program; Preservation, Utilization, and Transmission of Indigenous Documents in Asia(Special Subject)

Research Grant Program

Devoted to the basic theme “The Search for the Richness of Human Life and Activity”, the Research Grant Program solicits proposals for creative and socially meaningful research projects that mesh with this theme. Especially, amid ongoing specialization and segmentation of disparate fields of research, this program supports research incorporating the sort of cross-disciplinary vision that produces organic interaction and leads to synthesis ---research activities in which areas that tend to be segmented into opposing categories, such as social and scientific, academic and practical, and tacit knowledge and formal knowledge, interact and become integrated. Based on that premise, the program solicits proposals for research projects in the three areas; “Transmission and formation of culture”, “Society’s frameworks” and “Human ties with nature.” Proposals for projects that fall into more than one of these areas are welcome.

Constituent Programs: Research Grant

Communication with Society Program

This is a program that transmits and disseminates the results of grant projects to society. The Foundation selects candidate projects through monitoring and other means and cooperates with grant recipients to ensure that results are transmitted and disseminated to society in an effective manner. The program is therefore open only to present and past recipients of Toyota Foundation grants.

Initiative Program

This program supports projects that are likely to contribute to the development of new grant programs, current grant projects with the potential to produce greater results, and projects undertaken jointly with other organizations. It also includes the Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program (SEASREP).

Constituent Programs: Initiative Program; Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program (SEASREP)