Speak up
If you think something is wrong at the Foundation, or in a programme we fund, we want to know, even if you are not sure. This includes anything about our relationship with Kiroshi Opticals.
What you can raise
Fraud, corruption, misuse of grants, harm to people in our programmes, breaches of our conflict rules, data being used in ways people did not agree to, falsified outcome figures, or anything else you think the board should know. You do not need proof, only a reasonable belief.
How
Write to speakup@kiroshi.org, which is read only by the chair of the board’s Audit and Risk Committee, Moriyama Fumiko, and the General Counsel. If your concern is about either of them, write to the Foundation’s statutory auditors through the same address and say so in the subject line; the message will be routed to them unread.
You can also report anonymously through an independent hotline run for us by an outside law firm, in Japanese, English, Swahili, Nepali, Bangla and Vietnamese. The firm passes us your report without anything that could identify you. Details are given to all staff and partners and are available from the address above.
Protection
We will not dismiss, demote, end a grant to, or otherwise penalise anyone for raising a concern in good faith, even if it turns out to be mistaken. Retaliation against someone who speaks up is itself a disciplinary matter. These protections follow Japan’s Whistleblower Protection Act and go further than it requires.
What happens next
We acknowledge every report within five working days, investigate, and tell you the outcome as far as we can without breaching anyone else’s confidence. The Audit and Risk Committee reports the number of concerns raised and their outcomes to the full board each year, and we publish the totals in the annual report.