We're celebrating our work with children like those above, who study at one of our renovated schools in Tanzania
01.06.11
This International Children’s Day, we want to celebrate the 70,000 children around the world we work with, and introduce you to some them. They’re taking incredible steps toward improving their health, education and child rights.
Here’s a quick round up of a couple of our favourite developments from some of the countries we work in around the globe.
Both projects below are seeing children and communities truly take development into their own hands, ensuring projects are continued for years to come and introduced to other communities.
Tanzania
As well as re-building schools across Tanzania, we’re launched a project with Partnership for Health and Development in Africa (PHEDA), to improve children’s health and make sure nothing stops them from attending school and getting their education.
The project, which aims to support 2400 school children throughout the Kilmanjaro region, is implemented using five stages, designed to; assess the immediate health needs of the children, monitor their school and living standards, and set up school health clubs and train peer educators to ensure the project is sustained and children maintain good health and hygiene in the long term.
Two health clubs have been set up and 44 peer educators have been trained to help continue health education sessions (pictured right) at the schools and ensure children are taking steps to improve hygiene and sanitation and lower their health risks.
As well as basic hygiene lessons, the project is teaching children more serious health issues including including HIV/AIDS as well as Bilhazia disease.
Making screenings count
PHEDA’s School Health Screening Project has performed screenings and health education sessions at four schools, including Benjamin William Mkapa Primary School (see pictures in our slideshow below) and Chekereni Primary School.
Of the 1,557 pupils who were screened in three of the schools, 413 were identified with various clinical problems that required medical attention.
Teachers and parents whose children identified with clinical problems were informed and guided on the appropriate referral systems for further medical examination.
PHEDA will be making follow up on the progress of the pupils up to twelve months after the project.
Take a look at the photos below of some of the wonderful children taking part in the health project at Benjamin Mkapa Primary School.
In India, project partner Shaishav is working hard to inspire other organisations to learn from their model for development. But it’s not the adults leading this ground-breaking work – it’s the children!
Childreach International support Balsena, a unique initiative that promotes child rights and deals with other related issues such as child labour through a young person’s union.
The union is run and managed by the children themselves, providing them with a platform to interact with each other, discuss common issues and learn about their rights as citizens.
Rachel Paterson, our Development Project Manager, recently travelled to India to follow their progress while they documented their child rights work so far, ready to be disseminated through communities across India.
The workshop saw children record the structure of Balsena, how it works, and how it’s impacted children. To plot out its history they used tree diagrams and footprints to trace the project back back to its roots.
"It was truly inspiring to see such empowered children, creating a project which will improve the lives of children in their community and communities across India. They're taking their development in their own hands and having visible impacts on children's rights”
- Rachel Paterson, Development Project Manager
Check out Rachel's photos of the children at Balsena.
