ISSUE
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GIVING CHILDREN SAFE SPACES TO GROW
THANK YOU! Through your faithful support, our 2021 Christmas Match Appeal ‘A gift of hope’ raised £110,000 to give children an unforgettable day at a Viva Christmas Party – and a gift that will last a lifetime.
Last Christmas, a total of 400 churches and organisations in 23 Viva partner networks worked together to host 150 Christmas Parties. Of the 9,000 children who attended, half had not previously benefitted from programmes run by Viva or the partner network. Now they are connected! Thank you for your ongoing gifts and prayers.
Viva is dedicated to changing more children’s lives to fulfil their God-given potential. We impact over three million children in 27 countries through our 42 partner networks, which comprise more than 5,400 local churches and community organisations. Viva, CMS House, Watlington Road, Oxford, OX4 6BZ, UK 01865 811660 | info@viva.org | www.viva.org Registered charity number: 1053389
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Photos: Willow Creek (p1, p6-7), Mirek Pruchnicki (p5), John Cairns (p5, p7, p11)
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SPONSORED
FUNDRAISING ELISA & LIZ
You know when you volunteer to do something and then wonder what on earth made you decide to do it? My friend Liz and I committed to paddling a canoe 23 miles down the Thames to raise money for Viva. That’s about 18,500 strokes of the paddle in nine hours on the water.
Feel inspired to take on an exciting new challenge to raise money for Viva’s work with vulnerable children? Get more ideas at viva.org/ fundraise or contact Hugh at h.stacey@viva.org
Despite the wind that was determined to blow us off course, the lamb that needed rescuing from the water (really!) and the terrapin that distracted us; we made it. Along the way we learnt about perseverance, encouragement, friendship, generosity, and achy muscles, of course. So, if you get the chance to do something difficult to raise money for something you love… go ahead. 3
TRAUMA SUPPORT
FOR UKRAINE’S CHILDREN
Viva is using its Children in Emergencies expertise to respond to the needs of children and families who have been displaced and traumatised by the conflict in Ukraine. It is estimated that more than five million Ukrainian children need humanitarian assistance, either inside the country or as refugees. They face significant risks whether in conflict zones, on the move, or across borders in a new country. We are partnering with another Christian charity, Innovista, to build the capacity of local churches in Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova. We are equipping churches with an adaptation of the Phone Mentoring programme developed two years ago as a response to the Covid pandemic. It is based on ‘Parenting Tips’ developed in partnership with the World Health Organisation, Oxford University, Unicef and others. The mentoring has been redeveloped for different settings – in a conflict zone, on the move or for those settled in a different place. Much like the Covid materials, it still deals with how to manage your mental health, how to stay safe and avoid violence at home, and how to help your child with learning. Some extra content has been added around child protection risks, like trafficking, and how parents can recognise what they’ve been through before talking to their children about it.
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It is designed to be delivered over six weeks through support group settings and in meetings or phone calls with individual families. Each conversation or call explores key messages and encourages the family to take practical actions each week to put these into practice. A mobile phone app is being developed to record feedback and learning through the programme and it is being translated into Ukrainian and Russian. During a conflict or disaster, children become exposed to additional protection risks, including physical dangers, separation from family, and increased risk of abuse. Children also face risks to their mental health and psychological distress when they experience a sudden change in location, are living in danger, or especially when separated from their family. In these situations, the local church is often one of the first to act, providing for people’s basic needs, giving food, water, shelter and medicines. However, these volunteers can often be unaware of the protection issues that children face, and how they can support people who have been through traumatic experiences.
Having built up expertise in the area of Children in Emergencies in countries such as the Philippines and Lebanon/Syria over the years, Viva is well-placed to provide training about safeguarding and psychosocial care for children, and holistic support for parents and caregivers in times of crisis. More recently, as a response to the Covid pandemic, Viva developed its original Phone Mentoring programme, and this has now reached nearly 14,000 families in 28 countries, impacting 46,000 children.
In May, Kezia M’Clelland, our Children in Emergencies Specialist, visited Moldova with Innovista staff: “Moldova is a really small country and one of the poorest in Europe. They have received a large number of refugees but lack resources to support them. I listened to the team there to find out more about the situation and what they are doing. A lot of refugees I met had come from a big city but were now in a village – this was quite a big change for them. “It was great to talk to children. They spoke about the place they were – what they liked and what they didn’t like. One of the big issues is learning. They’re still mostly learning online from their school in Ukraine, which is great, but that’s really difficult to keep up with at the moment, being so distanced from it and not always having access to phones. One child said, ‘We had years of that through Covid, and now we have it with war.’ “There are lots of needs for children. Many groups are working with adults but are not always thinking of children so that feels like a gap. Lots of people in the community want to respond but don’t always know how to do that, especially on a deeper level. The visit confirmed to me that our redeveloped mentoring sessions will be really relevant.” 5
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EDUCATION AND FAMILY CENTRES COSTA RICA
Carmen Alvarez, our Director for Latin America, says: “Our six Education and Family Centres in Costa Rica are having a huge impact for children who are returning to school after two ‘lost years’ because of the Covid pandemic. “Churches in our partner network are opening their buildings, and volunteers are helping children who don’t have the extra support and are lacking confidence. They not only help children with formal, catch-up education but also provide pastoral support, helping them to be more resilient. “Teachers in schools told us that they are are very happy with academic performance and that children are more confident. “The most important part about these centres is that children are getting more of a holistic education. This includes time to laugh and play, because they couldn’t during the pandemic. We are grateful to God because we can see that the children are benefitting.”
Give thanks for the impact the network in Costa Rica is having in the lives of children who are at risk of falling into a negative life cycle of violence, drug abuse and poverty. Pray that these centres would be a place of hope and restoration for children and families, and pray for the provision of more centres in Costa Rica and across Central America.
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CONNECTING
THE DOTS
Finding local solutions for local challenges in countries like Nepal. Before the pandemic, seven-yearold Samir was receiving after-school support at a Learning Space run by Viva’s partner network in Nepal.
things started reopening, Viva was still there for Samir, with a repurposed programme designed to help him catch up.
During those early days, the staff described him as a shy boy with irregular attendance who was at risk of dropping out of school altogether. When the pandemic hit, everything closed down and Samir’s mother feared that this interruption in her son’s education would exacerbate his existing struggles at school.
Over the past year, Samir has benefitted greatly from his local Learning Space and the reports from his teachers are now very different. Samir is a role model for other children, as his self-confidence has sky-rocketed. He is now like an older brother to the other children as he helps the younger ones with their work and his teachers as a ‘class monitor’.
Samir’s situation wasn’t unique. As we know, the pandemic caused children everywhere to fall behind with their schooling, and while education is one of the surest paths out of extreme poverty, 400 million children are still fully or partially out of school worldwide. The benefit of working with local partner networks meant that once
How we connect the dots
Samir’s story is evidence of how much the trajectory of a life can change with a little support. Viva’s initiatives like this have helped over 3,000 children across the world get back into formal education during the past year. And what’s more, in 2022, Learning Spaces will start in 13 more countries. We are able to connect and resource local people in cities across the world with tried and tested materials thanks to people with a heart for children investing in Viva’s vision. Local churches and organisations are frequently at the forefront of efforts to protect and provide for
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vulnerable children. However, their activities are often isolated, limiting both scope and effectiveness. Viva’s model connects these ‘dots’ to take collective, effective action together for the children in their cities. Our strength comes through recognising that we are more sustainable together, that we carry more influence together, and that we can, ultimately, change more children’s lives together.
Whether it’s Comprehensive Care Centres in Bolivia that are preventing children from leaving home and dropping out of school, or providing life-skills sessions for children in Tanzania, local collaboration is the key to making a difference in children’s lives. We know that connecting the dots through small, practical steps towards partnerships results in a huge collective impact – Viva’s vision since the beginning.
Your part in Viva’s story
As a member of the Viva community that longs to see children thrive, you’ll celebrate with us that together, over the past 26 years, we have connected millions of children all over the world to a local, supportive network. We are inviting you to help ensure initiatives like the Learning Spaces and phone mentoring programmes continue to meet the needs of children long into the future. You can donate via our website: give.viva.org Whether you choose to support us financially or through prayer, thank you for partnering with us.
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PROGRESS DESPITE
THE PANDEMIC
The lives of almost 10,000 girls are being changed for the better through our long-running Girls’ Education Challenge programme in Kampala, Uganda. The Covid pandemic has been a massive obstacle in the way of progress - but in spite of the challenges there is good news, as Mim Friday explains. In 2013, Viva partnered with CRANE to help transform girls’ lives in Uganda. We started with just 500 out of school girls aged between 10 and 17 enrolling in one of 20 newly imagined Creative Learning Centres. Many of those girls are now mature young women whose lives have been transformed and who are now leading change in their own communities. By March 2017, 9,890 girls had been supported to get back into school or helped to stay in school when they might otherwise have dropped out. In March 2020, we were still walking a journey with 6,318 girls and young women. The 3,500 girls who have transitioned off the project have mostly finished their studies and gone into work. That month, all Ugandan schools were closed due to the Covid pandemic. For the next 83 weeks, schools remained firmly shut until January 2022. We were forced to rethink and regroup. Staff had already been prepared for home working. Teachers learned to get 10
maths questions into 250-character text messages. Mentors learned to Zoom. Staff started writing manuals and creating virtual learning platforms. Whatever could be done, was done. As the lockdowns extended from weeks to months, new strategies were pursued: transmitting through TV and radio; creating supplementary learning resources to compliment the government’s newspaper lessons. And once some movement was allowed, lessons under the mango trees where teachers created local learning clusters started to pop up. Meanwhile, our safeguarding team was busier than ever. Relationships that had already been established with the police, prosecution and probation and social welfare offices saw CRANE becoming the active responder to children who were lost, abused, sick and in trouble. Children who had resisted leaving the streets came to quarantine camps where counselling and support helped many of them decide that when they could, they would go back home.
An external study has revealed some surprisingly good news this year. While the number of students sitting exams went down across the country, we had more girls than ever before doing so. O-Level and A-Level students did better than they had done previously and better than the national average. Incredibly, whilst the schools were closed, the children progressed three times faster than expected. It’s a testimony to the community mentors tracking the girls and to the teachers who went the extra mile. We believe that our regular delivery of reading and self-study materials, phone calls and SMS messages helped keep girls focused on school. The number of girls from the programme who got pregnant or ended up in child labour was far less than the national averages. Additionally, the cases of project girls being abused has been a fraction of the national rates and of the community cases reported to us of children being abused. This, we believe, is attributable to the endless rounds of safeguarding training and awareness raising we have done with girls and their parents. We are pursuing three crucial system-level changes, for which we would value your prayers. 1.
In the area of disabilities, we have successfully opened and managed the National Education Assessment Centre, meaning children can now get a formal assessment from specialists.
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A new school inspection tool has been proposed, which includes elements of Viva’s Quality Improvement System training. It is set to be rolled out nationally. We desire better and faster child-friendly justice for children who have been abused or who are in conflict with the law. We have trained the Public Prosecution Service in basic Child Development and Child Psychology. The Judiciary has asked for the same training.
Article by Mim Friday, Viva Africa Director
The Girls’ Education Challenge programme is run by Viva and our partner network, supported by the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 11
NEW BOOK: OUT NOW!
Viva has co-ordinated production of this vibrant, engaging sequel to the first edition, published 15 years ago. The new edition by Langham Publishing includes practitioner contributions and case studies that reflect issues children-at-risk are facing today. It has a highly diversified authorship, with 27 different contributors from 21 countries, with insightful, contextual theologies from different parts of the world.
Topics covered include advocacy for children, child persecution, child-friendly spaces for children in emergencies and how the church can welcome in children who are refugees. It is especially written for those studying theology, mission or child development in a Christian setting, plus practitioners like those who lead ministries, churches and organisations.
Buy your copy at https://bit.ly/GHFCBookSales