Onna Village Museum Exhibition Committee (October 2020)

In Onna Village, where OIST is located, there is an institution called the Onna Village Museum. The museum stands alongside Onna-no-eki, a popular roadside attraction with restaurants and tourist shops, with a large parking lot and free admission for village residents. Currently, the museum mainly focuses on anthropological and archaeological exhibits, but there is a plan to enhance the natural history exhibits in the future. Section Leader Yoshimura was appointed as one of the committee members to review this plan. Onna Village overlooks a wide expanse of rich, shallow marine habitat, and behind it the lush Yambaru forest spreads up into the mountains. Administratively, Onna Village is a municipality that is pushing strongly towards fulfilling sustainable development goals (SDGs), which promote a sustainable relationship between people and nature—this has led to a statement called the Coral Village Declaration, which states the village’s intention to be the “world’s most coral-friendly village”. We feel honored to be able to contribute to help realize this vision by developing human resources through strengthening the museum’s natural history exhibits and promoting natural history research and community cooperation. We look forward to seeing what kinds of wonderful exhibitions we can create while working with the amazing committee members involved in the management of prefectural museum exhibitions.