vivanews
Connecting you to the world of children at risk
ISSUE 7
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Editorial Randall Villalobos Head of Mobilisation Viva Latin America
Picture this: you’re standing at the bottom of a cliff, armed with a collection of stretchers, bandages and medication, to help victims who have fallen from the rocks above you.Wouldn’t it be better to climb the cliff, put up a fence, and warn people away from the dangerous edge? Prevention rather than cure - surely it's always the best way. But when the scale of what you're trying to prevent is so vast it spans whole countries, and the cliffs you're trying to rope off are problems like HIV and AIDS or organised sex traffickers, the solution no longer seems so clear. No single project, no individual however passionate and vocal - can take on problems like these by themselves and prevent the ravages of disease or abuse from cheating children of their futures. There is a way to do this, though. And I see it happening. This is where the power of working together comes in. In this edition of vivanews we want to tell you about how Viva is working with hundreds of projects and churches to raise a united, determined and effective body of people who are saying 'no' to the traffickers, 'no' to the senseless spread of disease, and 'no' to the cruel treatment or abuse of children. In the following pages you will read about the 5,000 Bolivian children who have been marching through their country's cities, and by their own efforts educating nearly 30,000 adults about ways to keep children safe.You will also hear of work in Cambodia to help families out of the kind of poverty that makes selling a child an option they're forced to consider.There are many examples of people working together to climb the cliffs, put up fences, and make sure that children are kept away from danger and given the chance to become all that God intends for them to be. So please, read on; be encouraged.Together we really can give more children a safer, happier, and brighter future.
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Imagine if cruelty to children was something you could vaccinate against. If you could give people pills or injections to help them stop mistreating children, and start keeping them safe.
Well, on the streets of Bolivia, Viva + 132 projects + 41 churches are doing something just like that…
Every year for the last three years more than 5,000 Bolivian children have spent a week ‘vaccinating’ adults against treating children badly. They set up stalls in the busy market places of six major cities, and educate adults about how to keep children safe. If an interested adult stays and listens to their talk about child protection then they are ‘inoculated’ given a sweet! - and rewarded with a certificate that declares them as someone committed to the protection of children. This annual Good Treatment campaign is part of an innovative programme called Protagonismo Infantil (‘child advocates’) that helps empower children to stand up for their own rights.
Because the programme is run through Viva’s city-wide networks in Bolivia it is able to link local projects and churches across the whole country, meaning that a greater number of children are being protected than a single project alone could reach.
Each network has 12 representatives from these local organisations, six boys and six girls, so there are over 70 young people aged 10 - 15 leading the fight for the rights of Bolivia’s children.
They come together once a year for a national meeting and discuss ways to bring about change in their cities.
They develop activities around Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer in June; plan other campaigns and events to raise awareness throughout the year; then take those ideas back to their cities and communities, mobilising thousands of children to stand up for themselves and others.
The Good Treatment campaign is just one of the many initiatives dreamed up by this pioneering group: they have organised radio interviews and newspaper articles, arranged talks in churches and schools, and written letters to church leaders and members of the Bolivian government. Last year an amazing 28,000 adults were ‘vaccinated’ against mistreating children, and the numbers have been growing every year. This group of child advocates will be having its next national meeting at the end of March to discuss ideas for this year, so let’s pray that 2010 will see even more people given the right medicine to help keep children safe!
Viva is an active member of the Keeping Children Safe Coalition, which is currently made up of 17 UK agencies (including Oxfam,World Vision, Save the Children and the NSPCC) committed to creating a safer world for children. Check out
www.kcs-coalition.com for more information
We have been working together since 2001 to find a common approach to this goal and have jointly developed a set of international standards of child protection. As a coalition we are now providing a Child Protection Toolkit in order to help as many organisations as possible to reach those benchmarks.
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Problem: We all know that children should never be sold or trafficked, but how do we change the circumstances that make that seem necessary?
Solution: Viva + 40 projects + local churches + 1 international charity Approximately 100,000 children in Cambodia are the victims of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, and it is often extreme poverty that makes them vulnerable to this.Traffickers deliberately target the poorest areas, knowing that people are desperate enough to do whatever it takes to pay the bills.They trick parents into sending their daughters to work as maids or au pairs in the bigger cities, where they are instead held captive and put to work in bars and brothels.
So often we are only able to help these children after the event; after they have been physically and sexually abused; after the emotional and psychological damage has been done. But in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia’s capital, more than 40 local organisations and churches have come together with Viva and our partner StandOut International to help make sure that the traffickers never have a chance to exploit these children in the first place.
As poverty is one of the main reasons that families allow their children to be trafficked, we are helping to provide specialised vocational training and support for small business ideas to help adults find a way to generate an income and keep their families together. And the nature of the network
means that these struggling families are much more likely to actually receive that vital help: even if the project they come into contact with cannot meet the particular need, they can quickly and easily connect them with another project or church that can. The network has also organised a phone line, manned by volunteers from several local specialist projects. Children and adults can phone in to report cases of abuse, alert the network to potential traffickers, or ask for advice or help.The network can then put them in touch with the relevant project or local authority.
We are also showing community and church leaders how to take personal responsibility for vulnerable people in their local areas.The Daughter tool, something Viva has also used in Thailand, Nepal and the Philippines, is a very simple picture-based training course that teaches people how to prevent trafficking in their own communities, and how to intervene once they have recognised that abuse or exploitation is taking place. Stopping exploitation in Cambodia is an audacious goal, and we’re not there yet. But working together we can do more than simply put a plaster on a wound: we actually have a chance to get there before the tragedy happens, meaning that many of Phnom Penh’s children will never have to know the pain and trauma of abuse.
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Prayer Diary
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In June this year you can join with more than 3 million people over our World Weekend of Prayer to pray for children at risk. Why is prayer for vulnerable children so important? Mark’s gospel tells us that when the disciples tried to stop the local children from coming to talk to Jesus He responded in a revolutionary way: He took a child and placed him in the middle, promising the people that if they truly wanted to be part of the Kingdom the only way was to become like a little child.
The focus for the 2010 World Weekend of Prayer is putting children back in the centre: prioritising them, caring for them and learning from them. And whether it is friends praying together in England, 40 pastors in Indonesia, or thousands of children on prayer marches in Peru, together our prayers can transform whole nations.
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Through our city-wide networks across the globe we are working with 25,000 workers across more than 8,000 projects and churches. Our quarterly Prayer Diary gives daily examples of these real people and real situations, allowing us to pray regularly for children and those caring for them. If you are interested in receiving the Prayer Diary by email, please let us know at pray@viva.org or you can download it at www.viva.org/prayerdiary.aspx
Prayer materials
These resources include:
Global prayer
“Prayer is as vital to the changing of children’s lives as any feeding centre, foster programme or training course. I believe that prayer is powerful. This is why it is at the centre of everything that Viva does.”
If you would like to know more about the global issues affecting children and how best to support them in prayer, then our fortnightly Children at Risk Prayer News email will keep you informed.
This is also why we have spent time developing a set of resources designed to inform and motivate people as they pray with and for children at risk.
If you would like to pray in a more specific and more informed way, you can find a full list of these resources ready to be downloaded at www.viva.org/pray.aspx
If you want to find out more about how you can get involved where you are, or if you would like to receive some great prayer resources to help you pray with your family, friends, church or small group, please go to www.viva.org/pray.aspx or email pray@viva.org
Whether it is sudden disasters in places like Haiti or the Philippines, the slow-motion chaos of crumbling societies such as Zimbabwe, or areas of ongoing conflict like Afghanistan, Burma or the Congo, there are many countries in our world today where children are at great risk.
Just contact us at pray@viva.org to be added to the mailing list.
Chrissie Wilkinson International Prayer Co-ordinator
• Theme-based materials focused on specific issues, such as the difficulties faced by girl children in India, or pagan rituals that pose dangers for children in Uganda
• A series of booklets, developed for each year’s World Weekend of Prayer, packed with information, prayer points, and activities for both children and adults • A pack for schools, including a set of lesson plans to help children engage with issues facing their peers in other parts of the world
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Q: How many people are now benefiting from this training? A: So far at least 100 people in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe have been through Let Your Light Shine,
Isobel Booth-Clibborn Regional Co-ordinator Viva Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa there are now nearly 12 million children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and 2 million children who are currently infected with HIV. But Viva + World Vision + Compassion + Tearfund have joined forces under the banner of ARCA to stop these numbers from climbing higher. Together we have developed the Let Your Light Shine training, which is designed to help keep children safe from the many and varied dangers associated with HIV and AIDS. Isobel Booth-Clibborn responds to a brief Q&A on the tool that is helping people work together across the African continent. Q:What are the greatest HIV-associated dangers for children in Africa? A: Once a child is infected by HIV there is often very little quality care available, and the progression
of HIV into AIDS means that many of these children’s lives end far too early. And those left parentless as a result of the infection are very vulnerable to dangers like malnutrition, crime, life on the streets, and even kidnapping.
Q: How does Let Your Light Shine address these problems? A: The 12-module DVD-based course aims to help protect children from three things: discrimination,
poor-quality care and the infection itself. Discrimination often stems from ignorance, and can prevent children from being properly cared for.The training provides basic facts about HIV, and dispels damaging cultural myths. It not only highlights the importance of good-quality care for children with HIV, but actually equips parents, teachers and church leaders to offer it.There is also an emphasis on prevention, focusing on issues like parent-to-child transmission, proper nutrition, and accurate sexual health education for teenagers.
Q: How can we help more people protect children in this way? A: Protecting children is not just the job of one organisation: it has to be a priority for them all.We
need to be out there in every classroom and every church and every community, helping people care for HIV+ children and teaching them how to prevent others from becoming infected. This is a
huge job, but having a city-wide network means this vision can become a reality. When we ran Let Your Light Shine in Uganda last year we trained 58 people through the Kampala network.Those people then went back to their organisations and trained an additional 200 people, who went on to train a further 776 people.That’s how you begin to change a whole city.
and together they work with more than 5,000 children. And as we saw in Kampala the impact is spreading further through the networks. It’s so exciting to see this growing, and to watch whole communities and cities begin to work together to help keep children safe from the dangers of HIV.
Dinah’s story
9-year-old Dinah was used to looking out for herself.With an absent father, and a mother too sick to support the family, Dinah had long since accepted that school was something she would have to miss out on, and that regular meals were a rarity. And she was not the only child in her neighbourhood living this way: many of Kenya’s slums are full of adults and children affected by HIV and AIDS. Sadly, the social stigma surrounding the infection meant that local churches were not proactive about getting involved with these struggling families.
But Viva took 5 projects + 3 churches in Nairobi through the Let Your Light Shine training. The project leaders and church pastors were challenged to identify at least three families in their local communities who were affected by HIV or AIDS, and to encourage others to partner with them in caring for those three families. It was in this way that Pastor John came across Dinah and her mother.Through the network’s slum school project Dinah is now receiving a longed-for education, and the school she is part of is able to give her a healthy meal every day.
Pastor John has also been able to introduce Dinah’s mother to a project that can provide her with medical help, to slow the effects of the infection. Now Dinah no longer has to look out for herself; instead she and her family can rely on the love and care of many members of their own community.
Children are suffering. We all know that. Thousands of people are trying hard to help them. We all know that too. Yet the problems persist. Children are still suffering. In cities all over the world there are projects doing great work, but a lack of money, people and time means there is a limit to what they can achieve alone. We need to work together. Imagine what would happen if the people caring for children joined up. If child care workers, local churches, governments and international charities came together to tackle the issues faced by children. Whole cities would be transformed. Together we would have the power to bring about real change for children, not just chipping away at the surface of the problems but fighting them right at the root. At Viva we are doing just that. Through our 43 city-wide networks we are increasing the unity, quality and impact of work for children at risk, our joint action changing the lives of over 1 million children around the world. Together we can give more children a safer, happier and brighter future.
Viva, Unit 8,The Gallery, 54 Marston Street, Oxford, OX4 1LF, UK t: +44(0)1865 811660 e: enquiries@viva.org w: www.viva.org
Viva is an operating name of Viva Network.Viva Network is a company limited by guarantee no. 3162776, registered charity no.1053389, and registered in England at Unit 8,The Gallery, 54 Marston Street, Oxford, OX4 1LF, UK