Child Welfare Top Concern in Indonesia

ChildFund Indonesia National Director Sharon Thangadurai provides an update on issues most affecting children and youth in Indonesia. Many children are malnourished and child abandonment is not uncommon, so increasing children’s access to healthcare and education are pressing priorities for ChildFund.

Children Are in Crisis Worldwide

by Virginia Sowers, Community Manager

Millions of children around the globe go without food, shelter and clothing every day. The current economic crisis is only making bad conditions worse.

While many of us in the U.S. may be skipping that extra latte or dinner out, the World Bank predicts that 89 million more people—many of them children—are expected to be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2010.

At ChildFund, we’re working to connect more children with sponsors to help them lead healthy, productive lives. For less than $1 a day, you can make an amazing difference in a child’s life through sponsorship.

Our ongoing “One Child a Day” campaign in seven areas of the country provides a great opportunity to share the ChildFund mission.

You can also help spread the word about ChildFund’s One Child a Day campaign through Twitter and Facebook by inviting members of your social networks to consider sponsoring a child at just $28 a month.

When tweeting, please be sure to use the Twitter hashtags we’ve developed to track the campaign in each metropolitan market:

• Chico, Calif.: #1child4Chico
• Redding, Calif.: #1child4Redding
• Ft. Meyers, Fla.: #1child4FtMeyers
• Gainesville, Fla.: #1child4Gainsville
• Naples, Fla.: #1child4Naples
• Austin, Minn.: #1child4AustinMN
• Mason City, Iowa: #1child4MasonCity
• New Bedford, Mass.: #1child4NewBed
• Rochester, Minn.: #1child4RochMN
• Albany, N.Y.: #1child4Albany
• Schenectady, N.Y.: #1child4Schenectady
• Troy, N.Y.: #1child4Troy
• Providence, R.I.: #1child4Providence
• Milwaukee, Wis.: #1child4Milwaukee

Thanks for all you do to help children!

No Ordinary Life

In the Philippines, ChildFund is working with children and youth to understand their experiences of poverty and provide them with psychosocial support to build their self-confidence. In addition, youth are gaining hands-on experience and skills to help them meet the future.

Meet Regine, a youth leader with ChildFund Philippines, who has a remarkable story of achievement.

Saving the Lives of Mothers and Protecting Their Children

ChildFund’s successful health huts and community health worker training in Senegal are featured in a film produced by the Stories of Mothers Saved project.

Organized jointly by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood and the United Nations Population Fund, the film project honors women who did not die needlessly in pregnancy or childbirth due to a key action taken by her, her family, the community, a health worker or others.

ChildFund’s story of Maïmouna, a mother with a high-risk pregnancy, is just one example of how local access to quality medical care saves lives in remote, impoverished areas.

Thanks to the community mobilization, training and supervision efforts of the USAID-funded and ChildFund International-led Community Health Project (Programme Santé, Santé Communautaire), Maïmouna had easy access to a community health hut run by volunteer community health agents. The project works hand-in-hand with the health districts in Senegal, such as the Health District of Popenguine.

Maïmouna’s story highlights the importance of a community structure that stands by women and their families before, during and after pregnancy to help them understand reproductive health, danger signs and how to take action.

ChildFund also works to forge links between the community and government-run clinical structures. In this case, it was a community health worker, who was the critical link in the system that ensured continuity in Maïmouna’s care and treatment from the community level up through the clinical levels.

Watch the film and discover just how many more lives can be saved.

ChildFund Australia Survey Finds Child Poverty Top of Mind

Poverty and hardship for children in developing countries is the global problem of greatest importance to Australians, according to survey results released today.

ChildFund Australia’s third annual survey, “Australian Perceptions of Child Poverty and Aid Effectiveness in Developing Countries,” finds that two-thirds of Australians believe international aid is effective to some degree. More than one-third of Australians think spending on international aid should increase, while half feel it should stay the same. Only 9% of Australians think we should be spending less on international aid.

The survey results echo a 2009 U.S. survey by ChildFund International that found 66% of Americans believe the United States has an obligation to help poor children around the world. Almost one-third (31%) of Americans surveyed said that aid to the globe’s poorest children should be the number one charitable priority in the U.S.

Other top global concerns for Australians are war and armed conflict, terrorism and refugees/human rights abuses. Concern about climate change and the environment has significantly decreased, while the global financial crisis is ranked as the problem of least concern.

ChildFund Australia’s research, also conducted in 2007 and 2008, examines the views of more than 1,000 Australians about international aid issues. This year, a children’s survey was introduced to find out what Australian children think about poverty and aid.

Among 200 Australian children, the survey found that children hold many similar views to adults. However, children believe lack of food is the most pressing concern facing children in developing countries, whereas adults rank water and sanitation as the greatest concern. Also evident is that Australian children are even more worried than adults about the plight of children in developing countries and believe Australians should be giving more money to help them.

Download a PDF copy of the report from ChildFund Australia’s website.

From Sponsored Child to ChildFund Community Leader

by Demissie Belete, ChildFund Ethiopia

I truly don’t know what my life would have been if it was not for ChildFund and my sponsor. I am who I am today because of ChildFund’s care, protection and provision.

Who I was before ChildFund. The life of myself and my family changed drastically when my father passed away, leaving my siblings and me without a father at a very young age. My father was the family’s only breadwinner and it was a hard time for my mother, as she had no income to support six children. Shortly after, ChildFund came to my family’s rescue, as they educated me, provided clean water and other health improvements and, most important, assisted my mother and her ability to feed us. Today, with confidence I will say ChildFund is an organization that works extremely hard to assist the deprived, excluded and vulnerable children of the world, as well as striving to make them leaders of tomorrow.

Who am I today? I am a 27-year-old English degree graduate working with ChildFund in Northshoa, Ethiopia, as a sponsorship community development worker. The organization has taught me the importance of education, and currently, I am a third-year degree program student in business administration, graduating next year with intentions of establishing my own business. Through ChildFund’s emphasis on education, my life is filled with hope and encouragement.

As a community development worker, I earn approximately US$220 monthly. Not only do I financially support myself, but also my family, as my siblings can now go to school as a result of the opportunities ChildFund has offered me. Working within this organization has made me realize how fortunate I am to be involved in improving the lives of children whom I can relate to because I was once just like them.

On top of my work duties, I offer advice and guidance to less fortunate children as I encourage and motivate them so one day they can have a bright future.

My sponsor has not only financially assisted me, but has provided the encouragement that has led to who I am today. I would like my sponsor to know that I am now an employee supporting myself and my family, and her dream for me is fulfilled.

Where’s ChildFund?

Posters and billboards of ChildFund are popping up around the country. And we need your help in locating them.

The posters are showing up in malls and airports (one was spotted at LAX) and the billboards are currently in the Richmond, Va., area.

When you spot one, be sure to snap a photo of it. Even better, have someone take your picture standing beside the poster and upload it to our Facebook wall or Tweet us (@ChildFund) the photo link. Be among the first 100 people to send in a photo and get a ChildFund wristband.

Be sure to include your name and location. We’ll feature the “Where’s ChildFund?” photos on our social media sites to generate more discussion about the critical needs of children globally.

It’s all part of a public service campaign now under way to raise awareness of ChildFund and the work we do to change the lives of children living in poverty.

Will you help us make the world better for children? It can start with a simple photo to increase awareness of the work we do every day.

25 Years in the ChildFund Community

When you’ve worked with children in some of the world’s poorest and war-torn countries for 25 years, you have a deep commitment to improving lives and effecting change.

Meet Davidson Jonah, Africa Region operations support director who has been on the ChildFund staff since 1985, working in Sierra Leone, Chad and other African countries. He also served as ChildFund’s emergency team leader following the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

To mark Davidson’s 25th year with ChildFund, Tenagne Mekonnen, Africa Region communications director, asked him to share a few of his experiences of working with children.

‘My Friends and I Never Dreamt Big’

by Sumudu Sanjika Perera, Communications Officer, ChildFund Sri Lanka

Youth leader Susantha

Meet Susantha, 17. He’s a member of a ChildFund youth group in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, where we help young people develop and demonstrate leadership skills through community involvement.

At 4.30 a.m. Susantha’s day has already begun. He is up before dawn preparing his speech for the student assembly in his school. Later, he will go to the Kataragam sacred shrine. It’s Perahera (pageant) season and thousands of Buddhist devotees will flock to the site. Susantha, along with other youths, will be volunteering at the First Aid center.

The eldest child in his family of five, Susantha joined his local youth club supported by ChildFund in 2004. “I was very different to the person I am today,” he recalls. “My friends and I never dreamt big. We never participated in the community. I was shy. Then came ChildFund,” he says.

“The real change came after I participated in the life-skill development programs,” he confides. “I enjoyed taking part in trainings and camps, which helped me become a leader, interact with others, speak in public and set targets for myself. Now I am confident and I am comfortable in leadership roles. For example, my friends and I painted Buddhist temples, organized a Densala (free food distribution) and arranged a cricket tournament in the village. Recently we had a camp for other children and youths. We organized that,” he emphasizes with pride.

Providing youth with opportunities to engage in leadership and build self-confidence is a key ChildFund initiative. We know that skilled and involved youth will carry that expertise into their professional and personal lives.

“Youth have great potential and they are ready to contribute their energy, idealism and insights to a community’s growth and progress,” says Devaka Amarasena, ChildFund area manager for Hambantota. “When they are given the opportunity to become engaged, young people take on a sense of responsibility for the common good. The most important step is to equip them with necessary skills so that they can make an effective contribution to society.”

Susantha’s youth club actively plans and designs its own programs. Club members identify and discuss issues in their community, and raise them to the parent board of directors’ meetings. Susantha has proved to be an excellent facilitator in the youth group discussions and has been selected as a member of the club’s children/youth board of directors.

“Today I feel very confident and focused,” he says. “I have a target now. I want to do my higher studies and enter a university. I also want to do good things in my community.”

Haiti after Half a Year

Six months ago today, the unthinkable happened to a city where chaotic conditions were already the norm. On Jan.12, a 7.0 earthquake wracked Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving about 2 million homeless.

Within days after the quake, ChildFund partnered with CBM, whose particular focus is on people with disabilities. CBM has worked in Haiti for 30 years, and some of its efforts in Haiti are specifically geared toward children, who are doubly vulnerable. One of these, the Centre d’Education Speciale (Center for Special Education, or CES), was destroyed in the earthquake. ChildFund and CBM immediately planned a six-month project in which the partners would set up and run Child-Centered Spaces, providing child-friendly spaces around the city. Additional services include maintaining medication of children with epilepsy, medical assessments and physical therapy. The first Child-Centered Space was up and running in February, and six more were added in the spring and early summer.

Saraudju at a Child-Centered Space

Ten-year-old Saraudju had been a student of the CES for three and a half years when the quake struck. The school had become an important touchstone for this shy little girl who has a hard time making eye contact.

“Before the quake, the school was really helping Saraudju,” says her mother, Guilaine, a single parent with three other children. “She was becoming more and more interested in learning names, and she was asking more and more questions. Her confidence was growing, and she was specifically asking for things she wanted, which she never used to do.”

But then the school was gone, and, with it, Guilaine’s ability to tackle the tasks of rebuilding the family’s lives: finding food, work and a safe place to live. Her older three children could take care of themselves, but there was nowhere for Saraudju to go – until the Child-Centered Spaces opened.

Now, Guilaine reports that when she picks Saraudju up after activities, the little girl is full of excited chatter about what they did that day and what she looks forward to on the next.

If the images of the devastation were hard for us to look at on screens or news pages, imagine what Saraudju – and all the children who survived the quake – saw on a daily basis, especially in those early days. It’s remarkable that children have the capacity to rebound, to be “full of excited chatter,” no matter how dire their circumstances or how enormous the trauma. ChildFund seeks to support this kind of resilience.

Psychological trauma is a huge issue throughout the city, so the psychosocial support services provided in the Child-Centered Spaces since their inception has been integral. Beginning in April, CBM added psychosocial support for the staff as well.

ChildFund and CBM further adapted their plan by extending it another three months. The CES has yet to be allocated land for rebuilding, and school vacations run from August through October, so an added infusion of children needing the Child-Centered Spaces is likely.

Recovery is slow going. The quake turned some 200,000 buildings into 17 million cubic meters of rubble. The AP news service reports today that only 2 percent of debris has been cleared. “Reconstruction is still mostly a concept,” they write.

But the epidemics that many feared would follow the quake didn’t happen. Schools have opened. Children are playing together in Child-Centered Spaces. In one of them, sheltered by a tent amid the rubble, Saraudju smiles.

To support ChildFund’s ongoing efforts in Haiti, click here.