Greetings from JCI World Headquarters.

It is hard to start the day in this part of the world by writing such message. The world has woken up today to the impressive images of the strong earthquake followed by several aftershocks and the tsunami that hit Northeastern Japan, from which the shaking was felt throughout your country.

Rest assured that the outcome from this would be as positive as possible as we understand the devastating proportions that this kind of catastrophe can take. JCI World Headquarters, the JCI Board of Directors and the JCI community worldwide send their prayers to our fellow friends of JCI Japan and their families as this difficult time. While we all know how limited we are under these circumstances, we come to you to offer our help and assistance in any way possible.

I have personally tried to call several people in Japan and I have not succeeded, but managed to contact several of them by text message and we were relieved to hear that so far, there have not been any casualties among those members and their families whom we managed to reach. We hope this will be the trend as the days pass by.

We bring our solidarity of the JCI family worldwide to you, to the members of JCI Japan and your families and the Japanese people. We have you all in our prayers. Do not hesitate in contacting us in case you need.

Edson A. Kodama

JCI Secretary General