The Worst Place on the Earth to be a Child Today!

Henry

Vanesa

Before I go into ANY projects, I go through a lengthy process of investigation. It was about a year ago when I was first introduced to the "commuter children" of Uganda. If you put "Invisible Children" in your search engine, you will find a few links to these. However, on YouTube, I saw all of the video installments that the 3 students put together. It is eye opening. That was a year ago. I read several pieces about the LRA and the child soldiers, & even saw an hour long feature on some news show (I can't remember which one now).

I am going to give you one more tidbit that I read on "The Huffington Post", and say one more thing before I sign off on this subject:

Northern Uganda is the worst place on earth to be a child today, says a former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflicts. According to Oxfam, the rate of violent death in northern Uganda is three times worse than Iraq's. Since 1996, the government has herded more than 1.6 million people in northern Uganda into the internal displaced persons (IDP) camps. The WHO reports that in northern Uganda over 1,000 people die each week of starvation and preventable diseases. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) describes the level of suffering in northern Uganda as "an emergency out of control." As a Catholic missionary priest who has worked in northern Uganda for half a century describes it, "everything Acholi is dying."
In the January 2006 edition of Vanity Fair, in a piece titled "Childhood's End," Christopher Hitchens proclaims to expose the cynical politics behind one of Africa's greatest nightmares: the twenty-year war in northern Uganda. For those of us dedicated to bringing the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Uganda to the attention of the international community, any exposure of the conflict by a high-profile journalist such as Hitchens is welcome. But Hitchens's account of the two-decade-long war is dangerously misleading.
Since 1986 the Ugandan civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Over 25,000 children have been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to kill their friends and relatives. Each night a terrible saga is played out when approximately 40,000 children flee their homes in the rural areas to escape abduction, torture, or murder by the LRA. These are northern Uganda's "night commuters" or "invisible children."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniella-boston/genocide-in-uganda-the-af_b_21150.html

***Back to my writing. The other part of working with Kate is she has provided penpals for all of the KCCW children. The pictures above are the pen pals that Jaden and Morgan chose. Morgan chose 4 year old Henry: He is in baby class and is 4 years old. His favorite thing to do is play soccer.He lives with his parents, who are too poor to pay for his school supplies. They work in the stone quarry, breaking rocks all day long for under $1/day. His ambition is to become a lawyer.

Jaden chose Vanesa: She is P.1 and is 7 years old. She lives with her mother, who is often sick and is the breadwinner of the family. The father abandoned the family and they are really strugling. Vanesa loves to read, and her ambition is to become a nurse.***

Microfinance - Feed the Hungry

The line for lunch

happy children eating

the school

The "street kids" only get a chance to eat with the school kids if there is enough to go around. Otherwise, they stand on the other side of the fence, watching the others prepare for lunch.

As a part of yet another group I run, I recently met an amazing person (via e-mail), I will get to her in a minute. The youth Philanthropy group that I am over, I started about 2 years ago. It is called Kids Can Change the World. The purpose of the group is to get children to see that they can make a difference in someone else's life. When I started this group. I contacted CI and asked if they could provide my group kids with pen pals. I had, also, contacted CI regarding other things that my youth group could do for the sponsor kids. Unfortunately, they did not want our help (for various reasons).

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not easily deterred. I contacted CI again around the holidays last year to see if we could provide a Disney DVD to every center that CI has. Unfortunately, they do not have the DVD players, nor did they want to take on the task of hunting one down for the kids to use. I sure could not provide the player, but I think that even if I could, that would not be welcomed either. At any rate, Jaden, Morgan & I made use of the DVD's by giving them in gift bags to local children who are battling HIV/AIDS. They welcomed us with open arms, and even published us in their quarterly magazine. They said that the children were especially grateful that someone that didn't even know them cared enough to give them something at Christmas. Most of those children would not have received a gift from the agency because while there are usually plenty of toys for the younger kids, most of the older kids do not get anything.

Now, back to my story of not being stopped... I received an offer of a grant to help the hungry. I have to submit the paperwork & get approved, but here are the details:

Kids Care Clubs Microfinance for Kids– Feed the Hungry

Kids Care Clubs has added the component of microfinance to Kids Care Week 2009 because we were inspired by the children’s book, One Hen -- How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, written by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes and based on the story of Kwabena Darko of Ghana, The book and the website http://www.onehen.org/ offers kids (and adults) an exciting, fun and interactive opportunity to learn how a small loan can make a big difference.
Microfinance is the practice of providing small loans to people living in poverty who are unable to access bank credit. Microfinance helps families build and grow businesses, feed their families and pay school fees for their children. All clubs receiving a grant for a Microfinance for Kids project will receive a copy of the One Hen book.

Goals :
To educate kids about microfinance and world hunger
To implement a service project to feed the hungry, locally, nationally, or globally
To explore finance and philanthropy on a kid-friendly level

Now, faced with the prospect of a Microfinance Grant, that could turn the project into hundreds of dollars worth of food... I started meditating my next move. First, the children have to make something & then sell it as a business. What will they make? After hours of thought, it came to my head to have them decorate sturdy reusable grocery bags to sell. Now, I am in search of a place that can provide me with around $200 at $1 a piece (or less). They need to be sturdy & blank in order for the kids to decorate them.

Second, who would receive the funds? Well, Barbara has been talking about this Ugandan school, and to be completely honest, I try to block out any news of more children to help because I will naturally be drawn to helping them. I never asked anything about the school over the months that Barbara persisted in telling me about the school kids she was helping. It just so happened that she mentioned it again, right at the time that I was looking for someone to help... and BAM!!! That is how I met Kate... (to be continued)