Summer 2012 Newsletter

TOMS Shoes in Liberia Community in Senegal

Mozambique: After the Storm Misokis Story

World News Update

2A Step Forward in Liberia With TOMS ShoesIn Liberia, there are hundreds of happy

feet thanks to ChildFund and TOMS. Last week, ChildFund International delivered new TOMS Shoes to three communities. Its One for One program provides a new pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes sold.

It was amazing, says Marcia Roeder, ChildFunds corporate relations officer. There were kids as far as the eye could see. We would call out the shoe sizes and the names and put them on their little feet. There were a lot of thank-yous and kids shaking our hands.

Liberia endured 14 years of civil war, which took a heavy toll on the education sector before the conflict ended in 2003. School enrollment and retention rates are low. One reason for this is that students are required to wear uniforms and shoes to school. Without shoes, they cant attend.

A lack of shoes also means childrens feet are exposed to infections and cuts. A ChildFund study in 2010 estimated that 15 percent of school-aged children in developing countries have hookworm or another parasitic disease due to bare feet.

A new pair of shoes, then, is a step out of poverty, and ChildFunds partnership with TOMS is a step forward.

The shoe distribution went smoothly. Staff had pre-sized the children and met with community members to let them know about the arrival of the shoes. When the big day came, community leaders joined the festivities. The Minister of Finance and other officials attended, as well. They were really pleased to see the shoes going to the children, Roeder says.

It was such a tour de force, says Kristin, giving account manager for TOMS. Everyone came together. When we arrived after a three-hour drive, there was a big banner. Everyone was so excited.

As the day went on, the energy remained high. They were so excited to get their shoes, Kristin says. They didnt want to stop for lunch.

The high point of the day was putting the shoes on the childrens feet. There was such amazement that they were getting shoes, says Michael Brown, logistics specialist for ChildFund. They were so happy and proud.

Feet FactsShoes are about more than walking, playing and jumping. What else can shoes do?

They protect against most foot diseases, including ringworm.

They prevent cuts and infections. They allow a child to attend school.

Children living in Liberia must own shoes to go to school, but many parents cannot afford them. Lack of shoes is a serious obstacle to education for many 5- to 8-year-old girls and boys.

By Cynthia Price, Director of Communications

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These children have greater access to basic health care and good nutrition because of the health hut in their community.

People dont want to suffer, says Emile Namsemon NKoa, national director for ChildFund Senegal. When they learn from their friends, it is more sustainable.

That nugget of wisdom is the cornerstone of ChildFunds way of promoting community health in Senegal, where weve worked since 1985. Now, with a recent $40 million grant the largest weve ever received from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), we are poised to expand our work to provide access to health care throughout the country.

Senegals formal health system consists of several hundred doctors for the whole country, most of them based in the capital city, and a loose network of health posts that are as far as 20 miles from the nearest village. Health care is thus inaccessible for most rural communities. In a country where 54 percent of people live in poverty, this means that preventable illnesses and deaths are all too frequent, especially among the most vulnerable: children.

To try and bridge this gap in care, various international development organizations built health huts, which are small, community-based facilities designed to provide basic health care. After a while, though, many of those health huts were understaffed, underutilized or even closed.

Although the government understood the importance of health initiatives, it could not justify putting its limited resources into supporting health huts, with their disparate array of services and organizational philosophies. Community health remained disconnected from Senegals health network.

Maternal and child health is a central component of the work that the USAID challenge grant will support.

But things began changing in 1998, when ChildFund started refurbishing health huts with funding from a small child survival grant from USAID. The work grew over the next decade. Then, in 2006, USAID funded a five-year cooperative agreement with a consortium of six international organizations led by ChildFund. Its goal would be to strengthen primary health care at the community level. Existing health huts would be central to what would be called the Community Health Program.

Another piece of wisdom central to ChildFunds work: To accomplish big things, build on whats already in place.

In addition to ChildFund, the partners in the 2006-2011 project initially included Africare, Plan International and World Vision, joined in 2008 by Catholic Relief Services and Counterpart International. Right away, ChildFund led the partners in standardizing the services offered in their health huts, targeting maternal and neonatal child health, care for diarrhea and respiratory infections, malaria prevention and treatment, HIV/AIDS prevention and more.

We developed strategies and standardized tools, says Mamadou Diagne, ChildFund Senegals national health coordinator.

And, soon after, the unified effort began to pay off. The impact of harmonizing the services across all health huts in the five areas the project covered was to lessen the overall incidence of disease, according to Diagne: From 2006 to 2011, there was a very

Expanding Community Health Care Access in Senegal

By Christine Ennulat

Storied continued on page 4

4noticeable impact within a small geographic area.

By the end of the five-year term, the five regions the consortium served would expand to 13, and USAIDs initial $13 million in funding would double.

And it was the community members themselves who carried out the work through the network of health huts, which were supervised by the Ministry of Healths health post staff. ChildFund and other consortium members trained community health workers, traditional birth attendants and outreach workers all of them volunteers in basic health care and healthy practices. These volunteers in turn spread their knowledge throughout their communities.

The goal has always been that communities ultimately take ownership of the health huts, and in five years the Community Health Program will have transferred the facilities to community management. Villagers will pay nominal fees for care, and those fees keep the health huts running. Another very important goal is for the Ministry of Health to adopt community health as an integral part of the national health system rather than an appendage of it.

Now, with the new 2011-2016 USAID grant, ChildFund is on track to build on and expand this work throughout Senegal. The partners will establish another 2,151 health huts and 1,717 outreach sites nationwide, not only in rural areas but also in underserved urban areas. The project will also add a focus on neglected tropical diseases and educate communities about the health dangers inherent in the cultural practice of female genital cutting.

The community-level health huts will be linked to the national health system by way of the district and regional medical teams. The communities themselves will own the management of the health huts.

And more than 9 million people in Senegal will have access to primary health care.

Tax summaries now available onlineYou asked; we listened.

ChildFund supporters have frequently requested that their year-end tax totals be available online and now they are. Tax totals have been added to the customer service side of the website. once supporters are registered through childFunds secure website (using the sign in button on the top right of the homepage), they may go to the Manage Your account section. the page will list the previous and current years taxable donations.

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A Zavala schoolhouse before Tropical Depression Dando.The same Zavala school, destroyed by the storm.Updated 1/31/2012

In the latter part of January, Cyclone Funso and Tropical Depression Dando brought destructive winds and flooding rain to Mozambiques coastal regions, claiming the lives of more than 25 people, according to initial government reports.

Mozambique, with 70 percent of its people living in extreme poverty, is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Tropical storm Funso made landfall in northern Mozambique, unleashing heavy rains on Zambezia and Cabo Delgado. At least 16 people were killed, and more than 1,500 hectares [3,700 acres] of various crops were lost.

Just 10 days earlier, Tropical Depression Dando damaged and destroyed homes, washed out roads and cut communities off from help. Particularly hard hit was the Zavala district, one of Mozambiques poorest areas, where ChildFund works. Our educational initiatives were just beginning to see gains there. Now, most of Zavalas schools have been partially destroyed, their roofs and even walls ripped away, and books and other materials ruined. The roof of the health post is gone, and crops are decimated, including fruit trees just about to mature. Phone and electrical lines are down.

ChildFund, the only international development organization working in Zavala, is coordinating with its local partner and the government to assess the situation as it stands, to prepare for what is ahead and to provide logistical support.

Two Storms Impact Mozambique

Please Send Love, Not Packages

Your ChildFund sponsorship provides a child with the basic necessities of life such as access to health care, nutrition and education. While its natural to want to send packages and gifts to your child to celebrate a spe- cial day or a significant accomplish- ment, the customs expense is simply too great for our overseas offices to bear because the fee takes funding away from other valuable programs. In addition, too many overseas packages are lost or damaged. It is permissible to send packages if you sponsor a child in the United States.

If you want to share with your spon- sored child, why not include simple, flat items such as photos, bookmarks or stickers with your regular letters or cards? These additional expressions of love and caring mean the world to a child, and they can easily be enclosed in flat, standard envelopes. Or you may send a contribution (about three months in advance) and ask that a gift be purchased by staff in the community.

So the next time you have a family gathering or participate in some other activity that is meaningful to you, take a picture! And send it to your sponsored child along with words of encourage- ment. Your love is the best gift of all.

Expanding Community Health Care Access in Senegal

By Christine Ennulat

Expanding Community Health Care Access in Senegal

By Christine Ennulat

I can make a difference

-Misozi

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Reported by Priscilla ChamaMisozi: Advocating for Youth in Zambia

I am Misozi, age 23, the firstborn in a family with four children; I have two sisters and a brother. My father is deceased, but my mother, siblings and I live in the Kafue district, in Zambias capital, Lusaka.

When I was involved with ChildFunds program during my school years, I was the president of the Childrens Committee, a board that is made up of children who represent other children from various communities. I was also the spokeschild for the Global Movement of Children, which is a worldwide movement that works at making the world fit for children. I was also the secretary for the Kafue District Youth Fund.

At the community level, we were able to advocate on a number of issues that included childrens rights, the mushrooming of beer-drinking places, the regulation of opening times for bars, enforcement of the law prohibiting underage patronage of these places, protecting children against early marriages and pregnancies, negative cultural and traditional practices and the lack of recreational facilities available to children.

From there, we were able to create partnerships with the community leaders and went forth to the district level where we engaged with the district commissioner and the council.

We achieved many things we are proud of today as a youth movement of Kafue: Our communities are more aware of childrens rights; young people are more informed about the problems that affect them and how to deal with them; medical user fees were eliminated; some beer-drinking places have changed

their hours of operation; young people are more confident and knowledgeable about issues that concern them; and more young people are able to make informed decisions.

In 2008, I was chosen to represent Zambia at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico, where I presented on Meaningful Participation of Young Yeople in the Fight Against HIV and AIDS. I talked about some of the challenges that youth are facing in our country and what we are doing to combat them, how we network with the government and other stakeholders, and what am I doing as an individual.

Due to the experience that I had acquired in working with young people, I was hired as a research assistant for UNAIDS Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI), in which we researched the psychosocial well-being of children in a number of communities in our district for a period of three and a half years.

And now, I am doing volunteer work with Kafue Child Development Agency, an affiliate of ChildFund Zambia, where I am a child and youth mentor and mobilizer. I also do follow-ups with the children and youth on the advocacy issues we have worked on to see how they are being looked into by the responsible authorities.

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CHILD WIRE Summer 2012 World News

Creating Protective Environments

To contribute to the development of a protective environment for children under the RESTART Project in Afghanistan, 10 child well-being committees have been established in Sheik Mesri Township. The com- mittees represent a broad community constituency ranging from children to young adults and community elders.

Advocacy for Disabled Children

In Belarus, ChildFund alumni advocated to change the existing rules that prohibit the use of battery-operated wheelchairs by teenagers with disabilities. As a result, local manufacturers estab- lished a pilot manufacturing test and produced updated wheelchairs. They are light- weight and do not require external assistance to use, which provides greater mobility for the user.

Childhood Development Project

A special event marked the culmination of the From My Roots early childhood development project, which increased service coverage for children under 5, and provided training for health professionals. A final docu- ment was prepared and presented to communities, local leaders, municipal authorities and repre- sentatives of the Canadian Cooperation office which provided funding for the initiative.

Protecting Children

ChildFund Mexico continues to develop its program to prevent trafficking of indigenous children and youth in Chiapas. To date, work has included the assessment of children and mothers and the training of staff for applying evaluation instruments and conducting interviews. An estimated 120 children, mothers and teachers have already participated in workshops promoting awareness of this issue.Focusing on Child Well-Being

The Africa Regional Office and the Mozambique National Office launched the African Report on Child Wellbeing 2011, in partner- ship with the Africa Child Policy Forum (ACPF) and the Chissano Foundation. The report, which was pre- pared by ACPF, assesses the performance of African countries with regard to the allocation of available resources to sectors that directly impact children.

Afghanistan

Belarus

Bolivia

Mexico

Mozambique

Because we believe that the well-being of all children leads to the well-being

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