The Body Shop at Home Spring Live! was an epic success; with consultants raising an incredible £65,209 in just a day. More than double the previous record total last September.
The Body Shop at Home’s Spring Live! event gathered 2,400 like minded entrepreneurial consultants to celebrate 25 years of the business and 25 years of female empowerment. Along with raffle tickets and t-shirts, our team were armed with over 5000 goody bags, filled with products generously donated by The Body Shop. At an astonishing rate of selling one bag per second, every bag was sold in record time. Together, this all helped to raise an absolutely whopping £65,209 in just one day. This is more than double the previous record fundraising total from September’s Christmas Conference. Over 18 months since the start of the Rohingya refugee crisis, despite the wealth of agencies investing in education for children in Kutupalong, only about 45% of refugee children currently have access to education in the camps.
Navigating the multiple layers of bureaucracy and negotiating building space in the densely populated camp has made provision a huge challenge, and as the crisis has become protracted, the promised formal curriculum for refugee children was postponed by the government for over a year. Despite these obstacles, Children on the Edge have successfully established 75 Learning Centres which have all been running five days a week since June 2018, providing education for 7,500 children. 150 Bangladesh and Rohingya teachers are fully trained and running classes each day. They have been trained on communication, child rights, health, hygiene, first aid, identifying trauma, classroom management and how to make learning engaging. Despite the caste system being outlawed, Dalit children in India are shunned by society and suffer from exclusion, discrimination and exploitation. Through 30 Learning Centres, Children on the Edge are supporting these children to break the cycle of caste discrimination.
An important part of this education is helping children understand their rights. This is not only reflected in the curriculum, but recently through the establishment of ten ‘Children’s Parliaments’, where children learn about their rights and responsibilities, develop leadership, and learn the political system and election process of their country. The Good Guys: SpinningTop comedy shows raise a fantastic £6,411 for our work with Rohingya refugees18/1/2019
SpinningTop is a charity based in Wellington, New Zealand, which originally grew out of Children on the Edge UK. While they are no longer called ‘Children on the Edge NZ’, they still adhere to the same vision to ‘help forgotten children living on the edge of their societies across the globe’. In their case, they aim to “give balance to vulnerable children”. Over the past year, the charity has raised £6,411 for our work with the Rohingya, and are currently looking at how they might be able to partner with us in the future to make even more impact. Until this year they have worked predominantly either side of the Thai/Burma border with a couple of small projects in Shan State and another in Samoa. After the escalation of the Rohingya refugee crisis in August 2017, they decided they wanted to do something for Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh. So they approached Children on the Edge about a one-off donation to help with our education work in the camps. In the last few days Storm Norma has hit Lebanon with heavy rains, snowfall and freezing temperatures, leaving an estimated 70,000 refugees in need of emergency assistance.
Lebanon hosts over 1.5 million Syrian refugees, many of whom live in informal settlements with little to no infrastructure, as official refugee camps are not permitted. This makes these kinds of crises difficult to address, and UNHCR’s Interagency Coordination group report that 361 informal settlements and 11,301 refugees have been impacted by the storm so far. Unfortunately, the body of an 8 year old girl reported missing on Wednesday 10th January was recovered the day after. She had drowned after slipping into a rainwater channel. For over four years, Children on the Edge have been supporting a small Lebanese organisation called Triumphant Mercy, to provide education for 500 Syrian refugee children, living in informal settlements the Bekaa Valley. They are also instrumental in providing additional support, care and supplies for the children and families living in these camps. When the areas they work in were hit by the storms this week, this dedicated local group responded immediately, and Children on the Edge are urgently appealing for donations to assist them in rebuilding shelters. Less than two months away from the opening date of our new Early Childhood Development Centre in Wandago, Uganda, we look at how we developed a model for best practice and why we’re ready to replicate.
The model we have created together with Children on the Edge Africa in Loco Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre, has been developed in partnership with Madrasa ECD Programme, who have over 25 years of experience in developing an approach that makes a real difference in children’s cognitive development and later success in school. In conjunction with our own 28 years of experience working with vulnerable children and the use of our Child Protection Team model, this approach has produced a successful blueprint of best practice ECD, that is ready to replicate to new and different areas. Supporting around 70 children aged 3-6 a year, the Centre is currently being considered for designation as a centre for excellence in the Eastern Region. After a double trip to our projects in Bangladesh and India this month, our International Director - Rachel Bentley shares five highlights that reflect some great progress for the children we work with.
The magnitude, longevity and escalation of the Rohingya refugee crisis has placed an enormous burden on host communities in Bangladesh. With the market for casual labour saturated by new arrivals, compensation for a day’s work in many border areas has plummeted to below 70 pence a day. Demand for commodities has also spiked, pushing up prices for basic provisions.
Most of those living near border prior to this crisis were already teetering on the edge of subsistence poverty, and poorly equipped to host one of the largest migrations in modern human history. As a consequence, local communities are suffering and many children are forced to abandon their education. Many families cannot afford the associated costs of school or need their children to work in order to supplement household incomes. Cox's Bazar Cox’s Bazar tourist beach is an area of outstanding natural beauty, yet it is ravaged by extreme poverty. As a result, rather than learning or playing, children often need to work to support their families. Cox’s Bazar is one of six districts with the highest incidence of child labour across the country (9.4% compared to the national average of 6%) and even if children could survive without working, in the slum areas where we operate, there are no government schools functioning. ACAPS report that the education dropout rate here is 45% for boys and 30% for girls, largely because of low family income. It is one of the lowest performing districts with regards to education access, retention and achievement and UN figures state that currently, only 66.2 % of children in Bangladesh complete their primary education. 88% of female headed households have withdrawn children from school, citing rising food prices and the need for additional household labour. A full third of the children living in these communities come from Rohingya families who have fled previous waves of violence. While they have attempted to blend in, a study by migration researchers ‘xchange’ in July 2018 stated that 85% of local people believed that Rohingya children should not go to Bangladeshi schools. The reality is that these refugees would not have any other access to education. Doharazi Rohingya Enclaves Since the early 1990s these communities have served as a safe haven for Rohingya migrants fleeing abuse in Rakhine State. Falling outside of the scrutiny of the border police, refugees in these areas have typically sought to live below the radar, and local landowners have happily received the cheap labour they offer. Over time their numbers have swelled, with many new arrivals coming in the wake of the violence of 2016 and 2017. However, being unregistered and stateless, these Rohingya enjoy none of the services available to their counterparts in the refugee camps and children are entirely cut off from education and support. Both groups of children are in danger of exploitation, trafficking and growing up without any education or chance to enjoy the opportunities that should be inherent in childhood. Our fantastic corporate partners Make It Cheaper held a Halloween-themed Bake Off in October to raise money for Children on the Edge. To add to the sugar fuelled excitement they were lucky to have Manon, a quarter finalist in 2018’s Great British Bake Off, along to judge the competition. Manon also baked a five-tier chocolate cake to auction to raise even more cash.
There were some fantastic entries, with the five best-looking cakes shortlisted for tasting in order to determine the winner. The crown of Make It Cheaper’s Best Baker eventually went to Kelly – a cake Manon said she could eat all day! The Bake Off raised £400 for Children on the Edge and significantly added to the waistlines of all the staff as well. Manon was delighted to help support the Bake Off saying: "I didn't think twice when I was asked to join and donate one of my cakes to help Children on the Edge! I didn't do that much, but I hope with this extra money raised, it will make a little difference to some children in need and give them a brighter future!" This Christmas give someone a Children on the Edge inspired gift and help bring hope, life, colour and fun to forgotten children around the world.
* Thanks to the generosity of Montezuma’s they have donated Chocolate bars to Children on the Edge, so that all your donation goes to the work of Children on the Edge.
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