Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field
Entries from Fieldnotes tagged with 'schools'
Children discuss the needs of children
What does a child need to be safe, healthy, and to develop to his or her full potential?
This is not an easy question to answer, but who better to ask than children?
Dr. Sara Young (an instructor from UMass) and I spoke last week with elementary students from the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Public Charter School in Hadley, MA. We introduced them to UNICEF, its work with children around the world, and how they can take action through Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF and other opportunities.
Back to Iraq
It's pretty amazing how little Iraq is in the news these days. After all, there are still approximately 130,000 American troops in the country, (though between 35,000 and 50,000 troops are expected to pull out of Iraq by August). And there are still bombings every week that kill innocent Iraqis, including children.
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| © UNICEF/MENA06031/Giacomo Pirozzi |
| A boy fills his cupped hands with water from a UNICEF-supplied tap in the village of Kanikhan, some 65 km west of the city of Suleimaniyah. |
Generally, though, the country continues to get safer. More stable. And this is very good news. One result? After six years of managing operational response from neighboring Amman, Jordan, UNICEF Iraq is relocating senior staff to Baghdad. In the coming year, all members of the Iraq country office will do the same.
Children on the run in Pakistan and Sri Lanka
Lately we've been focused on the crises in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The two quite different countries have something big in common at present—in both places children are suffering terribly as a result of very adult conflicts. Fierce fighting between government forces and militants has forced scores children and families to desperately flee their homes in search of safety.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0508/Antonia Paradela |
| Pakistan, 2009: Children wait with their families to register at the Jalala Camp for the displaced in Mardan District in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), one of three camps created in the last week to accommodate people fleeing the current conflict. |
In Pakistan, more than 1 million people have been displaced by the violence. Over half of those are children. Imagine what it's like being a child caught up (or running from) armed conflict. Adults you look up to are acting panicked. You hear guns being fired, bombs exploding nearby. You may see people wounded and contorted in pain. You may even see people you love killed.
How bicycles help girls learn
Fifteen-year-old Rahinatu has a lot of responsibilities. In Ghana where she lives, as in many countries, adolescent girls like her are expected to play a major role in taking care of the household. And Rahinatu's chores take priority over just about everything else—including, alas, education.
That means Rahinatu can only leave for school in the morning after she's finished jobs that include cleaning the area around the family's home and washing up after breakfast. But her school is over three miles from her home—a lengthy walk on top of the chores.
"I was coming to school late every day," says Rahinatu.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2008-0866/Olivier Asselin |
| Ghana, 2008: Rahinatu, age 15, and Sherifatu, age 16, at attend school in the town of Tarikpaa. The bicycles nearby were distributed through a UNICEF-funded program to help cut children’s travel time in rural areas, where long distances are a major barrier to girls’ school enrollment. |
Rahinatu's schoolmate, Rahina, also had trouble making the long trip to school after scrambling to finish chores. In fact, she would miss school completely two or three times a week. All over the world there are girls like Rahinatu and Rahina—girls who desperately want to get an education but struggle to find enough time in the day for all they have to do.
It's a bus, it's a school, it's... both!
You know by now how important we think it is for children—all children—to have access to schooling. We write a lot about UNICEF's fast action to rebuild schools in Myanmar, Haiti and (oh so) many other places after they've been destroyed by disaster. Recently, I learned about a very cool innovation that UNICEF developed to give the poorest children of Delhi, India a chance to learn: we bring the school to them.
UNICEF, in partnership with the Delhi government, got a hold of two buses and completely refurbished them, turning them into Mobile Learning Centers. We equipped the buses with all kinds of technological aids like LCD televisions, audio-visual equipment, laptop computers and a full range of hands-on learning materials and books. The mobile schools operate four days a week, going to areas where they can help children who aren't in school. Street children, children working at construction sites, children in red light areas. These children don't have a lot of bright spots in their lives. The Mobile Learning Centers (Chalta Firta Schools, they're called) provide these kids with access to an education they wouldn't get any other way. In addition, each child who attends school at one of the mobile centers gets fed a meal.
What kids in Afghanistan are going through
Not too long ago, I blogged about the worsening situation in Afghanistan, and the impact it's having on children there. Now the UN Secretary-General has released a report—compiled with help from UNICEF—which shows just how badly children in Afghanistan are suffering as a result of ongoing conflict in the country.
Afghan children are being recruited as suicide bombers, drawn into the military and used for sex by armed groups. They are also frequently caught up in suicide attacks or targeted directly with violence.
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| © UNICEF/AFGA000871/Asad Zaidi |
| A girl watches from the window of her tent classroom at Khawaja Rowash Middle School in Kabul, Afghanistan. |
UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde Frafjord Johnson, who visited Afghanistan recently, said, “After the fall of the Taliban, people were under the assumption that Afghanistan was venturing into the post-conflict phase and that some of the aspects that were hitting children hardest would go down. But I think there is a reality check that has kicked in amongst all players that this is not that case."
Dangerous days in Afghanistan
I have a number of friends—reporters and photojournalists—who spend a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan. I used to worry more when they went to Iraq, and would feel relieved if they were just going to Afghanistan. But that's all changed. Afghanistan's low simmer of violence has been slowly building towards full boil.
This year has been deadlier for civilians in Afghanistan than any since the U.S. engaged the Taliban in 2001. According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 1,445 civilians were killed in the first eight months of 2008, compared with 1,040 for the same period in 2007.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ07-1106/Shehzad Noorani |
| AFGHANISTAN: A girl writes on the blackboard inside a mosque that serves as a community-based school, in Kamar Kalagh, a village on the outskirts of Herat. As there are no official schools nearby, some 460 girls and boys from nearby villages attend informal classes here, although attendance, particularly for girls, is irregular. |
A resurgence in violence in Afghanistan is bad news for all sorts of reasons. The worsening security situation in the southern and western parts of the country is keeping almost 70 percent of school-age children away from schools. In the past three years, more than 230 students and teachers were killed, and militants attacked around 250 schools.
Zambia: A toilet for every family
Casey Marsh is part of a delegation of U.S. Fund for UNICEF staff and supporters currently visiting UNICEF's country programs in Zambia. She will be reporting on her experiences from the field all week.
We have learned a lot about water and sanitation during our time in Zambia. The schools that we visited yesterday featured "hand-washing corners" and the schools and villages told us proudly about the fact that they are striving for one toilet for every family. For many years, villagers have defecated in the fields for lack of better facilities. This caused all kinds of diseases, and UNICEF is supporting a widespread effort to bring healthy sanitation, including pit latrines and water wells, to the region.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ96-1166/Giacomo Pirozzi |
| Children drink and play with water from a handpump financed by UNICEF at Nthombimbi Primary School, a community school in the village of Nthombimbi, Zambia. |
When our group woke up this morning in our lodge, there was a problem with the water tank and there was no water available for most of the guests. We take clean water, toilets and showers for granted every day, but for hundreds of thousands of people in this tiny country alone, there are no such facilities. When we missed one shower, complaints were filed on our behalf by our hosts, and apologies were made. However, everyone has a right to clean water and safe, hygienic facilities, and the irony did not escape us!
"Talking Walls" in Zambia
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| © US Fund for UNICEF/Casey Marsh | |
| Moms and their kids came from miles around when we came to visit their schools, even though the school year doesn't start for another month. |
En route to visit UNICEF programs in the southern province of Choma, Zambia, today we learned that the president of Zambia, Dr. Levy Mwanawasa, has died. So, today begins a national mourning period of 7 days, and the country is in quite a state of shock and grief. Everyone is being urged to stay calm in this time of crisis. Our first stop out in the field was Child Hope Africa, a pre-school with capacity for 150 children. It seemed as though all the mothers and their children—hundreds of them—walked for several kilometers to greet us at the school today, despite the fact that classes are not in session until September. But despite their numbers, there are unfortunately more than 1,000 pre-school-age children in the area that want to attend the school, and many have to be turned away because of overcrowding. Training and early-childhood education are key priorities for our colleagues at UNICEF Zambia, in close conjunction with the Zambian government. In fact, everything that UNICEF does is in partnership with the government and typically with other NGO partners as well. The idea is for the government to be self-sufficient, and ultimately, for there to no longer be a need for UNICEF in the country in the future.
Jazz musicians use their talents to make a difference
Local jazz musicians raise $3,718 for Iraqi children
Philip Crawford of Monterey, California recently coordinated his third fundraising effort for UNICEF. He recruited musicians from Monterey and San Francisco to play a concert devoted to Duke Ellington, an influential jazz musician who performed from 1923 until 1974. Eleven musicians donated their talents for the evening, including Andy Weiss, the drummer who played with Ellington’s orchestra, and Kenny Stahl, a flautist who previously toured with Stevie Wonder.
On a Wednesday night in May, 65 people attended a benefit jazz concert at Monterey Live, a music venue in the downtown area. Attendees paid a $25 cover for the show and all proceeds were donated to UNICEF. Throughout the concert Philip spoke of the conditions Iraqi children are faced with and how extra donations would benefit them. The largest donation was $1000, given by an Iraqi attendee, while a $300 donation was made by the local Rotary Club.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ03-0486/Shehzad Noorani |
| IRAQ: Three boys hold up slates with slogans and pictures, in a class in the Medina Al-Mudon primary school in Baghdad. The text reads “Long live our country. Long live Iraq. Long live the people.” The slate and other materials being used by the children are from a UNICEF-supplied School-in-a-Box kit. The kits, each of which contains sufficient basic materials for one teacher and 80 students, were distributed for use by up to 100,000 children in Baghdad. |
Currently in Iraq, only 40 percent of children have access to clean drinking water on a daily basis, and only half of all school-aged children attend school regularly.
In 2007, UNICEF delivered school supplies to 4.7 million Iraqi children, as well as 150 million gallons of drinking water and 4.5 million vaccinations.
Clay Aiken calls for Kenya's kids to return to school
UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken recently visited the East African countries of Somalia and Kenya, where UNICEF provides children with health care, education, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. This is the last in a series of blog posts he has written about his experience in the field.
In early July, after visiting Somalia, I traveled to Eldoret, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, to visit camps for internally displaced people. This is where some of the worst violence took place following the Kenya elections in early 2008. Thousands of children were made homeless by the unrest.
Everywhere we went, there were the charcoaled remains of homes, schools and shops. We drove for hours and everywhere we went, we saw people trying to get their lives restored.
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| © US Fund for UNICEF / 2008 / Nick Ysenburg |
Although many schools were re-opened, far fewer children are turning up for class than before. And classes are taking place in schools that have been completely destroyed. I saw children sitting on rocks and bricks—which used to make up the foundations and roofs of their schools—using them now as desks and chairs.
UNICEF calls for resumption of aid in Zimbabwe
Anyone who's been following the news these days is aware of the political turmoil in Zimbabwe. In the weeks leading up to today's highly contested runoff vote, many Zimbabweans who support the opposition party have been beaten or even killed. Tens of thousands have fled the country. Even worse, in early June the government banned all aid work on the ground in Zimbabwe—threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of children who need help from organizations like UNICEF to survive. Because the situation is so volatile and is changing so quickly, we wanted to give you some additional insight into what families and children in Zimbabwe are facing, and how UNICEF is trying to help them.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ06-0405/Giacomo Pirozzi |
| Belinda Makutya, 11, and her classmates read together at a UNICEF-supported primary school. Belinda’s mother is HIV-positive and her father died of AIDS. |
A lifetime of conflict for children in Iraq
Children in Iraq have spent their whole childhood under the threat of violence. It can be hard for us to get our minds around this: that Iraqi children have never experienced a time of peace and safety. For two decades now—their entire lives—these children have known only hardship. Sanctions, political insecurity, wars, and the exodus of professionals have had a devastating impact in Iraq and its children.
Basics like water, sanitation and medical care have become scarce. According to a UNICEF Humanitarian Update that was just published, only 40 percent of all children have access to clean water, and less than half are immunized. This year, Iraq experienced a measles outbreak. In response, UNICEF vaccinated over 240,000 children against measles, mumps and rubella.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ03-0108/Nasih Othman |
| Over 2 million children are refugees in Iraq, like this boy in an IDP camp, housed in a former primary school. |
The other Jamaica
What does the word "Jamaica" conjure up in you mind? Long, glittery beaches? Azure-colored water? Fancy resorts? Those are some of the images I would have thought of until recently. But, as I've learned, they're only part of Jamaica's very complicated reality.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ08-0267/Susan Markisz |
You see, for years now, Jamaica—that small vacation paradise about the size of Connecticut—has had one of the highest murder rates on the planet. In fact, it's often referred to as "the murder capital of the world." In 2007, more than 1,500 people, out of a population of only 2.7 million, were murdered. That equals more than four people a day, and includes an estimated 100 children. This year over 700 persons have already been killed.
Back to school despite all obstacles in Myanmar
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| © © UNICEF/HQ08-0563/Win Naing |
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| © © UNICEF/HQ08-0559/Win Naing |
UNICEF and emergencies
The Myanmar cyclone and the China earthquake. It's very unusual for two natural disasters of such massive scale to occur within such a small window of time. Luckily, UNICEF is used to dealing with more than one emergency at once, while also ensuring that none of the ongoing programs in more than 150 countries where we work in suffer. I guess you could say we're very good at multi-tasking on a global level.
UNICEF in Uruguay gets creative
Faced with one of the country’s worst economic crisis in history, Uruguay is struggling to provide their children with a good education. Many rural schools are in tatters, with few books and scant schools supplies. Current school drop-out rates top 40 percent in some communities. To turn the spotlight on this issue, the creative staff at UNICEF in Uruguay grabbed the media’s attention this past winter by organizing a cross-country horseback trek to visit rural schools. Why on horseback? Because it’s the traditional way many countryside children travel to school in Uruguay.
How the food crisis affects kids
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| © Thomas Fuller/The International Herald Tribune |
There was an excellent article in the New York Times yesterday that explains how the global food crisis is affecting kids. The article looks at a school in Cambodia as a case study in the larger emergency that is threatening children from Southeast Asia and Africa, to Haiti and beyond.
Have a look here: www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/asia/30cambodia.html[In the field] School neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro
We had an amazing experience this morning with children in the Nova Iguaçu community, a very poor area south of Rio de Janeiro. Theirs is one in which UNICEF and the community are coming together to develop a neighborhood concept...
[In the Field] Capacity Building for a Self-Sustaining Community
Our last visit was to the Murama 'Catch Up' program that is located in the primary school in the Bugesera District about 40km east of Kigali. The goal is to provide a basic education to all children even though they...
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Welcome to Fieldnotes. Blogging gives us the ability to quickly report from the field, alert you to media coverage of interest, and share the success of UNICEF's lifesaving work around the globe.
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