We support nine Learning Centres in the slum areas of Cox’s Bazar, ensuring that working children who cannot attend mainstream school can access flexible education and have a chance to rest and play with their friends.
As we prepare for the Christmas break and end of term celebrations here in the UK, we take a look at what the children at our tented schools in Lebanon have been doing to mark the end of their term earlier this year.
The children took end of term exams for the first time this summer. After the exams, children, parents and teachers were then invited to attend an end of year celebration. The teachers gave well-deserved, glowing comments about each child and presented them with a certificate and a small gift. To celebrate their hard work, the children were also given the chance to enjoy a number of fun day trips, which incorporated activities to build skills, like leadership and problem solving. The youngest children visited a nature park where they saw lots of animals and were able to go on a treasure hunt, eat lunch together and compete challenges. The children reported that they had great fun on the trip. The middle students enjoyed a day out to a little creek. They loved playing in the water, and also went on a treasure hunt, played team games and had a picnic lunch together. The oldest children went to a local historic town, to visit a cultural monument and take part in a scavenger hunt. This became a day of discovery, looking at architecture and history in a fun way, whilst making comparisons to Syria. The final celebration involved a movie night for the children, with a screening of ‘Finding Nemo’ dubbed in Arabic. For many of the children, this was the first time they had seen a film on a big screen. The teachers gave out juice and snacks and had around 400 children, parents and teachers watching together! Read more about our work in Lebanon The resilience of the Kachin community: From ‘Christmas in a bunker’ to rebuilding schools4/12/2017
Displaced families in Kachin State, Myanmar spent last Christmas Day in an emergency shelter, and New Years Day in a hastily constructed bunker as mortar shells blasted around them.
This situation has become commonplace for hundreds of Kachin children, who have fled conflict and are surviving with their families in Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps on the border of Myanmar and China. The hardest to reach of these camps are situated high in the mountains, with freezing conditions and very little access to aid. Families have fled to these remote areas in the hope of finding safety, and yet are subject to regular military occupation and attack. Spending Christmas Day in a shelter is not the worst these children have endured. 3,000 civillians from Zai Awng camp have endured regular shelling and military occupation, forcing them to the Chinese border a number of times, only to be beaten and turned away. A new settlement called Sha It Yang was eventually created, but it lacks clean water and with one road in and out, is cut off from basic supplies. Children have witnessed terrifying attacks, been forced to hide in the jungle overnight, lost many of their friends and family on the journey, only to end up in a camp with appalling conditions. Our teacher here said “We are doing the best we can, but naturally the children are quieter, less active and less able to be engaged and creative”. Thanks to the response of Children on the Edge supporters, we’ve been able to ensure that the two new Centres built in the new camp are warm and safe places, where children can begin to recover from what they’ve been through. Last New Year’s fireworks across the border were terrifying for them, we are hoping this year they feel safe enough to enjoy them. Children on the Edge remain the only organisation providing ongoing support to young children in these remote camps. Going into 2018 we will be actively seeking support for this crisis that the world has overlooked. One teacher said “The wider community is so tired of the fighting, they just want to go home, and they don’t understand why the world isn’t paying attention”. Find out more about our work in Kachin State.
On Friday 27th October, local chef, Juliet Graham organised a 'Syrian Feast' at Tuppenny Barn in Southbourne, to raise funds for our tented schools for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The event raised an incredible £2245.
Juliet, who owns Green and Graham catering in Hambrook wanted to do something to support Children on the Edge and in particular, our education programme for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. She organised the Syrian themed feast, creating her own menu of delicious food which was freshly prepared at Tuppenny Barn with help from a team of volunteers. Juliet Graham said: "In 2016, I visited the refugee camps in Calais. Having seen how people were living, I knew I wanted to do something to help. Soon after, I heard Nuna Matar speak in Chichester and I thought it would be fantastic to join up with Children on the Edge and do something locally to raise funds, build awareness, and have some fun at the same time!". Nuna Matar runs the education programme we support in Lebanon, and visited Chichester in April 2016. She met with a number of local supporters to talk more about the programme, inspiring many local people to get involved in supporting this work. The meal for 67 hungry guests included lentil, chard and freekeh soup, flat breads, falafel and moutabal, along with lamb, marinated chicken kebabs and roasted quail, with an array of side dishes - Mujadara, Fattoush salad, Muhammara and honey roasted figs with halloumi. All the dishes went down extremely well with guests, who dined with the delightful tunes of some traditional Syrian music in the background, performed by members of the Sussex Syrian Community Group. After dinner, Director of Children on the Edge, Rachel Bentley spoke about our work in Lebanon. She explained how we have been working with Syrian refugees in Bekaa Valley for over three years, in partnership with Lebanese NGO - Mercy Foundation. Our programme provides quality, child friendly education for 500 refugee children, aged 6-12, who are unable to access government or UN school provision. The schools are safe places with a trusted adult presence. Where other projects of this kind bring in teachers from the outside, our model raises up teachers from within the Syrian refugee community. It costs just £194 a year to educate one Syrian refugee child in one of our tent schools, so the total of £2245 raised from the banquet is enough to educate 11 children for a whole year. Juliet added: "I'm delighted that the evening was such a huge success and raised vital funds for a very worthwhile cause. I'm grateful to all the volunteers that helped to make the event possible, and to Tuppenny Barn, who very kindly provided the venue for free". Rachel Bentley, Director of Children on the Edge said: "We'd like to say an enormous thank you to Juliet and her team for not only providing such a lovely evening of fine dining and entertainment, but raising so much for our work with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. As a small charity, funds like this really do make a huge difference, so we are grateful to everyone who was involved for making the event such a success". Find out more about how you can organise a fundraising event for Children on the Edge. We're taking a look back to our history, and will be sharing memories from our early work in the 1990's and early 2000's as part of a #ThrowbackThursday series.
In 2005 we established a Child and Community Centre in Aceh, Indonesia helping children and their community rebuild their lives after the traumas of the Asian Tsunami. The aim of the project was to start to rebuild a sense of normalcy for the children of the community. We worked with them to find local recognition and support and the project is now running independently. Our UK Director Ben Wilkes talks about one of his best memories of working here: “On my last day living in Aceh, Indonesia, after living and working there for 8 months on our Tsunami project, I leant against one of the buildings at the Child Friendly Space and just watched about 200 children of all ages playing and having fun; just being children. When we arrived to work on the project, there were no children. The locals were very suspicious of us and closed to the idea of what we were trying to do. In that moment, before leaving to fly home, I knew that undeniably Children on the Edge had made a difference. To the community, its elders and most importantly, the children who were overcoming their trauma and discovering how to be children”. Children on the Edge continue to make a difference to the lives of thousands of vulnerable children around the world. Read more about our work and how you can support us. We work with partners in Bihar State, India, providing education for ‘Dalit’ children who are denied access to school. Recently we have established a new ‘rooftop’ school as a creative solution to providing education in a severely crowded and muddy slum area. Despite the caste system being outlawed, its hierarchical rules still pervade across India and result in the oppression and exclusion of those in ‘lower’ castes. The Dalits are considered to be the bottom rung of the caste system, and are often known as ‘untouchables’. We support 25 schools in Patna, both in the urban and rural areas, but recently our partners identified one urban slum area facing severe poverty, crowding and appalling conditions. The ground is too sodden and muddy to build on, there is a lack of space to rent and any shelter that is available is often cramped, dark and flooded. The idea for a 'rooftop' school provided a creative solution for a classroom, avoiding the muddy slum floor. The children are now able to be out in the fresh air, using the rooftop school to gain an education. This urban slum area where the new school is located is a ‘Musahar’ community, who are considered the lowest strata of the Dalit caste, also known as ‘rat eaters’. The children that attend this school have been called ‘rat pickers’ by locals, and we are working with them, not only to provide education, but to rebuild their sense of self worth and awareness of their rights.
Sister Veena, project leader in the urban Patna schools says “Every person has an inbuilt capacity for change. Children with limited resources are able to bring a change in their lives and life of the community. I would like to see their self esteem and self image grow stronger. I want them to grow in a loving and caring atmosphere”. Just £22 pays for a month’s rent for the rooftop classroom. You can donate to project here, or sign up as a monthly donor to provide consistent support for our work in India. Read more about our work in India
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