After Exchange Week, Sponsor Relations Managers Ready to Take Action

By Nicole Duciaume, Regional Sponsorship Coordinator, ChildFund Americas

In the Americas region, four of ChildFund’s sponsor relations managers visited other countries for a week to observe firsthand what their counterparts do. This post concludes our four-part series about the exchange program designed to improve the sponsorship experience. Read the series.

Our weeklong exchange program for sponsor relations managers in the Americas opened the door to in-depth conversations on policies, practices, processes, operations and cultures. Each sponsor relations manager now has an action plan to implement a promising practice gleaned during the exchange.

Here are some of their final reflections on the experience:

Ana enjoyed her visit to Mexico, where she, like the other sponsor relations managers in the exchange, visited the field.

Ana Handrez, of Honduras, who visited Mexico: In the 19 years I have worked with ChildFund, this was my first time visiting another country specifically to discuss sponsorship issues and experiences. I was very surprised to see the engagement and initiatives from ChildFund Mexico’s local partner organizations. They knew their policies very well, and they were very proud to share their ideas of engaging children in sponsorship activities. It was amazing! The visit was worth every single day.

Valeria Suarez (Mexico): Ana’s visit was an enriching experience for Mexico’s office and especially for the sponsorship team. The national office and field sponsorship staff realized that even though each country has “particularities,” both share similar conditions, processes, histories and results. We enjoyed showing Ana how things are done here in Mexico, how sponsorship processes and visions have changed in the past few years, and how results have started to be achieved. We learned from her how processing times should be improved to continue enhancing the sponsorship experience, and Ana learned from us how creativity and working closely with children can provide better information for sponsors.

Cynthie Tavernier-Jervier, of the Caribbean, who visited Guatemala: This week makes me want to continue to make the sponsorship position more and more effective. I realized again how important the part that we play in programs actually coming to fruition to meet the needs (educational, social, health) of the less fortunate of our countries. So, a wonderful thing about my job is helping to bring benefits to less fortunate children and families and making a difference.

Diana Benitez (Guatemala): The exchange is an opportunity to know in situ the sponsorship processes. I see this experience as very exciting and enriching. Although Dominica and Guatemala have very different contexts, the sponsorship processes are similar. This exchange will impact our work going forward.

Dov (in blue shirt) was impressed with the youth involvement during his visit to Bolivia.

Dov Rosenmann, of Brazil, who visited Bolivia: This was an opportunity to reflect on our current practices and identify key areas of improvement for immediate implementation. I consider myself a beginner in sponsorship management in ChildFund, and being in Bolivia with an experienced team is, for me, a unique chance to directly ask questions and take in knowledge. On the other hand, I hope I was able to share with my Bolivian peers more about Brazil’s experience in managing sponsorship. As for what has been the best part of the exchange, for me it was seeing the youth participation at the local level and learning about Bolivia’s communication corners. Both were very inspiring and definitely an initiative to be multiplied in other countries.

Rosario Miranda (Bolivia): My expectation was to learn by comparing processes and seeing opportunities of improvement. Both national offices have similar interests and efforts toward integrated sponsorship and program activities to contribute to children’s development. Having Dov visit our national office and four local partner organizations was a wonderful educational exchange experience. We were able to compare operations and provide valuable information to improve each other’s sponsorship processes and developmental activities with children.

Santiago Baldazo, of the United States, who hosted Ecuador: This was a great experience. Although in planning for the week, we assumed that discussing sponsorship processes when both countries were already very familiar with the procedures would be somewhat tedious.  But, while we shared the “how” of the sponsorship processes, it was very valuable for us to have the opportunity to discuss the “why” as well.

Zoraya Albornoz (Ecuador): Staff in both offices work hard to give children the chance of better opportunities for their lives. Through this experience, I was able to better understand the way other offices work and realize the good things we have in our own operations as well as the importance of working closer to the local partners. In the daily work we lose the real perspective of our strengths and weakness. I saw that we have some things that can be improved in order to reach our goals.

Learn more about all of the countries where ChildFund works around the globe.

Girls of Grace Team Visits ChildFund Projects in Brazil

 By Tassia Duarte, ChildFund Brazil

Fifteen-year-old singer-songwriter Gracie Schram, along with the team from ChildFund LIVE! partner Girls of Grace, made a visit this month to visit ChildFund’s programs in Brazil, where Gracie sponsors a 1-year-old girl.

Gracie makes crafts with girls at ASCOMED, ChildFund’s partner in Medina, while a film crew captures footage.

Gracie and representatives from Girls of Grace, which holds conferences across the United States aimed at teen girls, went to our programs in Vale do Jequitinhonha and Belo Horizonte in mid-June. They captured footage for a video to use at their conferences to promote sponsorship through ChildFund, which supports the events.

In Medina, children welcomed their visitors with posters and songs, and everyone participated in a traditional round dance. Gracie played with the children and then met Jovelina, her sponsored child.

Gracie and Jovelina.

“I was actually happy, even though it’s such a hard thing to see,” says Gracie. “But it’s really cool that I’m going to be able to be a part of her future and allow her to have a better life that she wouldn’t have without sponsorship.”

In Medina, while visiting ASCOMED, ChildFund Brasil’s local partner organization, Gracie and a few Brazilian teenage girls made crafts, and she also sang for the children. The visiting team learned more about the activities children participate in that help them develop socially, and they saw a room specially designed for the children to write letters to sponsors.

In the rural outskirts of Medina, the team learned about conditions that were disturbing: families struggling to survive in houses with no bathroom or running water, living far from the closest bus station and with poor access to education and health care. “Being so close to the poverty makes it really real, and it forces you to really think about where and who you are,” Gracie says. “And to think that people need so many things like clean water and health care, it’s really hard to see that.”

Gracie sings for an audience of children in Medina.

In the region of Comercinho, the team met families that have benefited from ChildFund’s assistance. Water is scarce there because of drought conditions, and the little water available has not been healthy to drink.

ChildFund has worked to protect the nearby river, so animals don’t have access to the springs, which leads to pollution. Families are now able to channel clean water to their homes. Trained “water watchers” monitor the water quality and act to preserve it, a sustainable practice that will help their children’s futures, as will sponsors like Gracie.

Brazilian Coalition Targets Child Labor

By ChildFund Brasil Staff

ChildFund Brasil, with the financial support of telecommunications company Fundação Telefônica Vivo, has launched a project to fight against exploitative child labor in Brazil.

The project, Melhor de Mim (“The Best of Me”), is set to last two years and will target 500 children ages 6 to 14 in the Jequitinhonha Valley in the state of Minas Gerais. Working with its local partner organizations, ChildFund Brasil seeks to raise awareness of the risks of child labor through dialogue with children, teens, parents and other community members. Expert facilitators will lead the discussions. One notable part of the project is that it will also engage businesses who employ children. ChildFund’s goal is to educate employers about the serious risks that young laborers face, including physical dangers and missed educational opportunities.

Brazilian children and teens in poverty-stricken regions are sometimes forced to work to support their families.

In Brazil, hiring children under 13 is illegal. Yet, according to national data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 704,000 Brazilian children aged 5 to 13 were working in 2011. The majority of child workers are 10 to 13 years old, and 63 percent live in Brazil’s countryside. These numbers mark a 23.5 percent decrease of child laborers from 2009, but clearly the problem remains significant.

The majority of Brazilian child laborers, almost 55 percent, receive no income for their work, and those who are paid earn an average monthly income of only US$68. Child labor practices are receiving a spotlight today with the International Labour Organization’s World Day Against Child Labour.

The Best of Me’s activities began this spring with the enrollment of children involved in labor. The next step is to mobilize parents to make them aware of the project and sensitize them to the risks of child labor. After that, children will attend workshops using the Aflatoun method, which empowers children to play a key role in building a better society. By affirming children’s right to speak out on the issue and fostering dialogue among all parties involved, ChildFund seeks to facilitate sustainable change around child labor.

“The name of the project, The Best of Me, means that everyone becomes involved to the best of their abilities,” says Dov Rosenmann, ChildFund Brasil’s program manager. “Everybody is contributing their best to prevent child labor.”

In Brazil, Advocacy for Clean Water

By Priscila Oliveira, ChildFund Brasil

Reflecting the fifth article of the Universal Declaration of Water Rights — ”Its protection is a vital need and a moral obligation of men to the present and future generations” — ChildFund Brasil strives to educate communities about water preservation for the benefit of future generations.

The project “Meu Meio, Minha Vida” (My Surroundings, My Life), is part of the Vigilantes da Água (Water Watchers) program and is a result of the efforts invested in the communities of Vereda, Bidó, Pedra do Bolo, Tombo and Empoeira, in the Jequitinhonha Valley, a semi-arid region in the state of Minas Gerais in eastern Brazil.

A group of water watchers in Brazil gather at a pond.

ChildFund Brasil’s local partner organization, Municipal Community Association of Medina, carries out the program, which trains community leaders to monitor water quality and educate the community on advocating for their right to have access to clean water. Currently, 18 men and women monitor water quality, which benefits more than 200 families.

For Maria de Almeida, a 42-year-old farmer from the community of Tombo, participating in the program has been valuable. “This project made us learn more about the water we use,” Maria says. “And, knowing that it was contaminated, we now fight for improvement and for the preservation of the springs. I feel happy to participate in the project and for the opportunity to educate other people.”

One water watcher gets a sample.

Paula Gava, coordinator at the Medina community association, notes, “The program is a way of working on environmental issues as a whole in the community, of making everyone reflect on the environment. At the moment, we discuss the situation of water availability.

“The reality is that there is a lack of water during this period of drought, and furthermore, we’ve detected coliform bacteria contamination,” he adds. “We already have people mobilized and aware of the bad water they consume. Our job is to provide information so that the community can organize themselves, feel empowered to demand clean water and become part of the solution.”

As the program continues, community groups are working with Minas Gerais’ rural extension agency and municipal health and agriculture departments to improve the quality of water.

Photography Exchange Program Brings Cultures Into Focus

 By Priscila Oliveira, ChildFund Brasil

Photographs span different languages and long distances, as a group of American and Brazilian students learned during an exchange program. In January, 12 students from Soka University in California’s Orange County traveled to Brazil to work with teens involved in ChildFund Brasil’s Photovoice project.

Students from California participated in a photography workshop with Brazilian youth.

The group gathered in the city of Medina for a workshop. The teens and college students shared their approaches toward setting up pictures and, along the way, gained an appreciation for a different culture.

“It was an exchange where all students were engaged in teaching and learning,” says ChildFund Brasil Social Program Manager Dov Rosenmann.

The workshops took place at Medina’s Little House of Culture, another important project of ChildFund, which has worked in Brazil for 46 years. The space is meant to revive community bonds and pride in their cultural roots. Children, teens and young adults often find encouragement to pursue arts and other interests there while also gaining technological skills.

The Soka University students from California.

Besides participating in the Photovoice workshops, the American students also donated six digital cameras and one projector that will be used by students from the communities that participate in this project.

Photovoice was developed by ChildFund Brasil in partnership with social organizations all over the country with the goal of promoting peaceful coexistence and healthy social relationships among young people through the art of photography. Participants take pictures of daily life in their communities, many of which are lacking necessary resources.

In addition to acquiring knowledge about photography, the young people have the opportunity to express their points of view about the daily life in the community and to reflect with criticism about what they photograph. More than 300 youths have taken part in Photovoice.

The teens decide on which subjects to capture — often family relationships, local culture, nature and social themes. “The importance is to capture the elements that contain a meaningful story,” Rosenmann says.

“Chicken Plus” Project Sustains Brazilian Families

By Patricia Toquica, Americas Region Communications Manager

Much significance is attached to the Easter egg tradition: springtime, fertility, rebirth and life. But for the women of the community of Sao Joao de Chapada, near the city of Diamantina in Brazil, an egg hunt has become a daily activity that not only means nutritious food for their children but also a much-needed source of income.

But which came first: the chicken or the egg? In this case, the chicken, thanks to ChildFund Brasil’s Chicken Plus project, which allows many women in extremely arid regions of Brazil to produce food and generate income at home instead of having to migrate to cities for work. This helps ease the problem of families leaving home and residing in urban slums.

Families near the city of Diamantina in Brazil sell produce from the community farm at a local market.

In Sao Joao de Chapada, the community farm project started with a donation of 300 chicks a few years ago, and now the chicken population has grown to 1,200. The eggs provide high-protein nutrition for more than 30 pre-school children attending an early childhood development center, plus healthy meals and snacks for older children and families participating in the project. Each family receives 12 eggs a week and one chicken per month for consumption or for selling at the local market, along with other farm products like vegetables and homemade goods.

Rafael is an agricultural engineer who leads the Chicken Plus project, and Geralda is one of the local participants.

Geralda, a mother of four, volunteers at the community farm about two hours a day. “While we work with the other mothers picking up the eggs, cleaning the farm or in the community garden, our children play and learn at the community center,” she says. “With the money we get from the eggs, we feed our families and keep the project going, so we’ll always have food.”  A community savings fund, set up when the farm was established, ensures that chicken production keeps going strong.

With a sustainable approach, the project is leading community members toward the development of innovative businesses based on chicken farming.  The project also enhances women’s business skills by emphasizing quality control, microcredit options and entrepreneurship.

ChildFund Brasil Expands Work to Amazon Region

By Patricia Toquica, Americas Region Communications Manager

School sponsorship is a new initiative of ChildFund Brasil to reach children in the most remote areas of the Amazon forest and improve their educational opportunities.

As teachers, Raimundo and Tomé are working to improve educational opportunities for children in their remote Amazon village.

Raimundo and Tomé are the local teachers in Tres Unidas, a small community located along the banks of the Amazon River, three hours by boat from the Brazilian city of Manaos. This community is part of the Kambeba indigenous group, one of hundreds of ethnic groups that live in the Amazon forest, a vast green territory more than twice the size of Texas.

Elementary schools in remote areas of the Amazon lack basic infrastructure.

Elementary schools in remote areas of the Amazon lack basic infrastructure, such as proper roofs, desks and even bathrooms. “Sometimes children take their lessons outside, under the shade of a tree, because it gets very hot during the day in the classroom, not to mention during the rainy season,” explains Tomé.

Most of the classes are multi-grade with an average of 30 students, ages 4 to 12 years. The children’s age differences make it difficult for teachers to follow up on programs and individual progress. “We divide the board into four parts and the children into four groups according to their ages; we work with them in separate activities, depending on the topic,” says Raimundo.

Children are eager to learn every day.

Still, every single child in this little village of palm-thatched huts housing about 20 families goes to school every day and looks forward to learning.

The ChildFund school sponsorship program in Brazil is a new initiative developed in partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (Fundação Amazonas Sustentável – FAS). ChildFund seeks to improve school infrastructure and access to quality education for school-age children in isolated communities deep in the Amazon forest. Launched in September 2012, the program also aims to raise children’s awareness of the importance of sustainable use of their resources, so that they can become “true guardians of the forest.”

For Raimundo, who is also the Tres Unidas school director, educating children in his community is about delivering formal curriculum and also focusing on indigenous culture. It’s important that the children learn about traditional history, rituals, language and medicine.

He notes that indigenous schools in Brazil typically have inferior infrastructure and learning materials. As part of their partnership strategy for the school sponsorship program, ChildFund Brasil and FAS are working to reduce the cost of delivering educational services to remote areas. “We don’t want to replace government but facilitate development,” says Virgilio Viana, director of FAS.

Thus, ChildFund and FAS are partnering with municipalities. For example, the municipality is covering the cost of providing teachers, and ChildFund and FAS, with the help of the community, are building or improving schools and also supporting teachers with additional training and teaching tools.

The School Sponsorship program is already piloting in the Sustainable Development Reserves of Juma and Uatumã, supporting 20 schools and nearly 300 students. In the long term, ChildFund Brasil’s goal, with the support of sponsors and donors, is to have a presence in eight natural reserves and reach children in more than 500 communities in the Amazon.

You Can Resolve Now to Help a Child

By Kate Andrews

Many of us are making resolutions to eat less, exercise more, call our parents on Sundays, get more organized and achieve any number of other positive goals in the new year. In this season of setting resolutions, we ask you to consider sponsoring a child in 2013; don’t let another year slip past.

Felipe

Five-year-old Felipe, who lives near the town of Diamantina, Brazil, doesn’t have access to clean water or enough food. With a $28-a-month sponsorship, you can help children like Felipe live healthier and more stable lives.

Starting this week and running through the middle of January, ChildFund International is working to build our number of sponsors through a New Year’s resolution campaign.

Also of note: Sponsoring a child takes less work than going to the gym five days a week. “There’s always a tendency for people to resolve to eat less or exercise more,” ChildFund’s digital marketing director Timo Selvaraj says, “or to say, ‘Next year I’m going to make a difference.’ Let’s not allow 365 days to go by. It’s a simple message.”

To sponsor a child, please visit our website. It’s a great way to start 2013.

Behind the Scenes With ChildFund Spokesperson Alan Sader

by Loren Pritchett, ChildFund staff writer

Alan Sader, ChildFund’s TV Spokesperson

When I sat down with Alan Sader, ChildFund’s TV spokesperson, I’ll admit I was a tad star struck. When I was younger, I’d seen him on countless commercials—sitting on a stoop in a developing country, arm wrapped gently around a small child. His posture was strong, his voice was both kind and commanding and his message was always clear – by giving a little each month, I had the opportunity to help change a child’s life.

Beatrice, 5, a child in ChildFund Brazil programs, is one of the many children Alan spoke to in ChildFund’s latest commercial.

For the last 20 years, Sader has spoken on behalf of children around the world. By sharing their stories and encouraging a U.S. audience to become sponsors, Sader has helped many children escape poverty. In our conversation, he recalled several trips to ChildFund program areas and shared how each child he meets reminds him why his work is so important.

“I do plays, I do commercials for lawyers and furniture stores and that’s great for providing food for my family but there is a legacy involved in this work [with ChildFund],” he says. “Making the lives of children better is the most important and rewarding work I can ever do. There are a lot of children whose lives have been changed because of this and I am happy talking to people about that.”

In 1993, one year after his first appearance in a ChildFund commercial, Sader traveled to Kenya to work on a second TV spot. He met numerous children whose stories he would share with the world but one child in particular helped reaffirm his decision to work as ChildFund’s spokesperson.

“At the time, my youngest daughter was 6-weeks old,” he says. “During this particular trip, they placed a small child in my arms. I can remember thinking, a baby feels like a baby and that baby felt like my baby; and I knew they had the same needs. It felt so good to communicate that need to the camera, to share that with whoever could see the commercial and encourage them to react by helping a child.”

Alan with Daniella, 9.

Although Sader realized that all children around the world had the same basic needs, he was exposed to a level of poverty unlike anything he had seen in the U.S. “There was a shocking quality of poverty in these places. I saw communities where entire families lived in shacks made of tin and paper to keep the weather out,” he says. “I had never seen up close and personal poverty. Although I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, and I knew that my family came from poor mountain folk on my mother’s side, I don’t think my people were ever starving, malnourished or lived in places where it was dangerous to drink the water.”

He explains that his firsthand experiences in some of the most impoverished countries have been humbling and serve as a continuous reminder to help those who are less fortunate. So he has taken his own message to heart. Since 1992, Sader has sponsored two children through ChildFund – a girl from Brazil and a boy from Kenya. Both youth are approaching an age where they will complete ChildFund’s program, but Sader knows his support will have a long-lasting effect.

“I’ve met them both,” he says. “The young woman has special needs but is able to do things that make her feel included and worthwhile – when I hear from her (most letters come from her family), she is very happy. And Arnold started a business at a young age because he was able to buy rabbits using a monetary gift I sent him – so he tells me about his rabbits in his letters. I keep in touch with his father as well.”

Parents, especially mothers, play an important role in the communities Sader has visited. “ChildFund projects depend on the involvement of the local people,” he says. “I’ve seen them involve the whole community. It is amazing to see the mothers cook, clean, and make money at the markets and then volunteer to help their children have a better life.”

Alan filming with 8-year-old Morrone in Brazil.

It’s this behind-the-scenes perspective that has motivated Sader to continue his role as ChildFund’s TV spokesperson. “I am continually impressed by this organization,” he says. “ChildFund is not run by some expert sitting back making all the decisions. It is a collaborative effort between the country, who knows what is best for their people and folks who want to help here at the home office.”

Home is Richmond, Va., to both ChildFund and Sader. And when he’s not dropping into headquarters to plan his next filming schedule, you can find him doing what he does best. “I’ve been acting since I was a child,” he says. “It wasn’t until much later I decided to make a career of it.”

Alan Sader has been ChildFund’s TV spokesperson since 1992.

Sader is well known in Richmond theater circles. Last year he played King Lear, a role that won him best actor from Richmond Critics’ Circle and also played the role of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His latest work was on the motion picture, Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg

“I will continue to do theater and movies as opportunities present themselves,” he says. “And I hope to continue to do commercials and represent ChildFund as well. My wife is an artist, my oldest daughter is married and my youngest is a junior at Virginia Tech – so life is good.”

I expected to hear nothing less from a man who uses his talents to change lives around the world.

Want to see Alan Sader in action? Check out ChildFund’s latest TV commercial and visit our website to sponsor a child.

Children Are the True Innovators

by Ron Wolfe, ChildFund Senior Business Systems Analyst

The favela is a maze of alleys.

The day was coming to an end, and our last home visit was accessible only through one of the many narrow and dark alleys that crisscross the favela (urban slum) on the edge of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Above me, though, a young girl leaned out a window, grinned, and rushed to open the door. As we entered, she held up her finger to ask us to wait one minute, ran up the winding stairs to the upper floor, and returned with a pink, plastic toy computer. She smiled at us again and said proudly, “Netbook!”

Children love technology.

While deploying technology pilots over the past two months in Dominica, Zambia and Brazil, it has become clear that technology has a universal appeal. The appeal, though, is strongest among the children.

Staff from ChildFund International and ChildFund Brazil spent a week in Villa Ventosa, a village in the Nova Barroca neighborhood to continue the mobile application tests that began in the Caribbean in April. We worked with our affiliated partner, GEDAM (Grupo de Educação Desenvolvimento e Apoio ao Menor), to evaluate an Android application created at our headquarters and loaded onto tablet computers. The app synchronizes existing child data acquired during a home visit with geospatial information so that we can better analyze geographic patterns among our enrolled and sponsored children. This data is then combined with a photograph of the child’s letter to his or her sponsor, which was captured with the tablet’s built-in camera and sent to a database in Richmond, Va. In the future, this image will be queued into a translation database accessible to our translators around the world.

The favela covers a vast expanse of land.

In Brazil, GEDAM currently implements programs for approximately 500 ChildFund sponsored children. During the pilot, the team, consisting of representatives from ChildFund International, the Brazil office and GEDAM, set a goal of reaching about 20 children over three days in the field. Each day was split into morning and afternoon home visits where the two teams walked the dense neighborhood amid stray dogs and hollow clay brick houses with corrugated roofs that extended beyond the horizon.

The participating community mobilizers were immediately excited by the potential impact these devices could have on their work. Their day is often filled with administrative tasks that, if streamlined, would give way to more child-centered programming and an improved child/sponsor experience. As seen during previous pilot tests, the mobilizers came up with multiple ways in which properly focused technology could advance ChildFund’s mission. These insights will guide future applications and ChildFund’s broader mobile platform strategy.

The tablet immediately attracts children’s interest.

Every child we met during a home visit seemed drawn to the tablet. Some intuitively reached for the glass surface and used the standard gestural commands to interact with the device. Some simply smiled when they realized that this home visit was different, and they were participating in a unique experience.

One thing became immediately clear: although we consider our work in mobile technology to be innovative, the children are the true innovators. It comes natural to them.

On the way out of her house after we captured an image of the letter she had just handwritten, a teenage sponsored child turned to the team and said, “Next time, give me the tablet and I’ll type the letter directly to my sponsor.”