Pretty amazing news coming out of Japan from Akira Sasaki and his Skiers Helping Japan volunteer group. You may recall our blog post from back in March about the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, how a bunch of skiers including Akira Sasaki, Julia Mancuso, Chemmy Alcott, and ex ski racer Kazuko Ikeda got together to bring relief to the victims.

Here’s a video of Akira and his team loading the skiff to take supplies to the island (pardon the choppiness of the video, but Akira did a livestream and his iPhone 4′s internet connection must have been slow).

After months of collecting donations and lobbying the press to help spread the word, Akira and his team finally brought a huge amount of food, supplies, and utensils to Katsura Island to feed the population in shelters for 2 days.

The people of Katsura Island have been largely forgotten by relief agencies and have had to fend for themselves ever since the natural disasters hit.

So much had to come together for these moments to happen:

the ski community came together in a big way to donate;

the press and reporters sympathetic to the cause had to talk about it;

administrators needed to get the organization off the ground;

Japanese ski association and Japanese farmers got behind Akira and donated resources and product;

teams of volunteers needed to mobilize to buy and transport;

the team cooked for scores of people in the island’s main shelter.

It really is exactly the kind of thing, when community — people from Europe, the US, Japan and many other countries — comes together for a common purpose to help our fellow man.

Awesome story and we’re proud to be part of the shredder community that helped make this story reality.