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As their second family, they would meet regularly with their moai for both work and play and to pool resources.

Traditionally, groups of about five young children were paired together and it’s then that they made a commitment to each other for life. In small neighborhoods across Okinawa, friends “meet for a common purpose” (sometimes daily and sometimes a couple days a week) to gossip, experience life, and to share advice and even financial assistance when needed. Today the idea has expanded to become more of a social support network, a cultural tradition for built-in companionship. If an individual needed capital to buy land or take care of an emergency, the only way was to pool money locally. Originally, moais were formed to pool the resources of an entire village for projects or public works. The term originated hundreds of years ago as a means of a village’s financial support system. Moai, one of their longevity traditions, are social support groups that start in childhood and extend into the 100s. A social support group that forms in order to provide varying support from social, financial, health, or spiritual interestsĮlders in Okinawa, Japan, one of the original blue zones longevity hotspots, live extraordinarily better and longer lives than almost anyone else in the world.