The 'Chi Half' is a challenging yet beautiful half marathon through Chichester city centre and the South Downs that aims to raise vital funds for our projects. The route, which includes a mixture of road, cross country and cycle path terrain, will start at Chichester College and take in the historic sites of Chichester, including the Cathedral and the walls. It will then lead up to the pinnacle of the Downs before wending its way back down Centurion Way. Children on the Edge is organising the event in conjunction with Chichester District Council. Due to take place on the 14th October 2012, the event is expected to be hugely popular and is already being supported by local running clubs. The main sponsors of the race are Montezuma’s Chocolates and Store Property with other locals firms including Harwoods and Evans Weir lending their support. The marathon will be a fantastic way for local people and those runners further afield to raise funds for our work. By paying an entry fee and running the ‘Chi half’ participants will already be helping us as a little really can go a long way in the places where we work. Better still any runners can set up a just giving page and get sponsored for their efforts, or purchase a Children on the Edge T shirt or running vest with proceeds going to our work. The race will take up to 1,000 runners and is open to all entrants whether you’re an elite athlete or jogging around dressed as Elvis. You can register online at Race Timing Systems or call the Children on the Edge office for an entry form on 01243 538530. There is an Early Bird rate for applications received before June 30th of £20 (affiliated UK Athletics Association) and £23 (non-affiliated). After June 30th, the cost for athletes is £22 (affiliated UK Athletics Association) and £25 (non affiliated). Please keep updated on news and tips on our Chichester Half Marathon page, ‘like’ our facebook page or follow @Chichesterhalf on twitter. We had a fantastic time at our eighth annual Easter Trail on Saturday where over 350 children joined us in learning about our work and collecting delicious Montezuma’s chocolates along the way! The Graylingwell Park Partnership – Linden Homes, Affinity Sutton and the Homes and Communities Agency – sponsored this year’s Easter Trail, which raised a fantastic £3,500. Natalie Flint, sales director at Linden Homes Guildford, says: “We’re very proud to have sponsored the Easter Trail for the second year running. As ever, everyone had a great day out and Children on the Edge is an extremely worthwhile charity helping the most vulnerable children around the world.” During the event families not only enjoyed the trail itself but took part in fete games, bouncy castle bouncing, craft and face painting. We also announced the winner of the Montezuma’s ‘Design your own Easter Egg’ competition and the winners received a full size egg with their own design on it. Congratulations to winners Jena Juggins, aged 6 who made a pink egg face and Leo Tregear, aged 8 who created a spring landscape. Both Jena and Leo are from Fishbourne primary. We also had a visit from the Mayor, Councillor Tony French who did a little tour of the stands himself and said "The Easter Chocolate Trail is a wonderful example of the community of Chichester District coming together to help a locally based charity." Thank you to all those who came along, our generous sponsors and as always a huge thank you to Montezuma’s Chocolates for coming up with the idea in the first place, supporting us along the way and providing such wonderful chocolate. Did you know that when you shop online you can raise funds for Children on the Edge, at no extra cost to you? Shop online at your favourite retailers using Give as you Live and a percentage of your spend will be donated to us, at no extra cost. There are 1000’s of stores signed up, including most high street names like John Lewis, Tesco, Sainsburys, Amazon and HMV. Give as you Live are rewarding us with an extra £5 for every new shopper that signs up to support us through Give as you Live. This means that with only 100 shoppers we can raise £3,000 this year, at no extra cost to us and no extra cost to you! Please sign up today and help us raise an additional £3,000 this year, by doing what you do already! In late February Ben and Esther took a trip to work with Patrice Millet, founder of of an innovative sports project in Port au Prince, currently supported by Children on the Edge. Here they talk about some of their experiences. "I thought I was already very familiar with the work of Patrice, having spent the last few years writing about the project" said Esther, "But actually seeing the massive impact a simple football project can have on children that vulnerable was amazing". The purpose of the trip was for communications and some general capacity building, so the start of the trip involved going along to a series of the football training sessions to get a feel for the day to day work. Each session was extremely professional and disciplined. Patrice always finished with an awesome pep talk, often focussing on good citizenship, working as a team and respecting others. The boys were completely transfixed throughout and always clapped at the end, which is a rare sign of respect in Haiti, meaning ‘I have learnt something, thank you for teaching me’. The discipline is well balanced with a good dose of fun. One session ended with piggy back races and spontaneous singing, spilling out into a Conga. At Children on the Edge we talk about bringing ‘life, colour and fun’ to children living in the worst conditions, and here it is really brought to life. Children living in abject poverty, living with loss, disease and violence, all in a conga line on their way to pick up a sack of food from the back of Patrice’s jeep. "The food parcels are given at the end of each training session and we can’t stress enough how vital they are" says Ben, "We interviewed 8 boys who live in the tents and many of them said they only eat once a day". They also talked to one boy’s mother at her home in the camps. She described how she wakes up every day worried about where she will find food to cook for a family of seven. The parcel her son brings home will feed them for two days. One of the most moving experiences of the visit was taking 20 boys from the slums for the trip of a lifetime in the mountains. Patrice had described how these children had never been out of the city. Where he was taking them was to a place owned by a friend of his, who let us use it for the morning. It was a place that closely resembles paradise, with a beautiful pool overlooking breathtaking scenery. The whole morning the boys were yelling with excitement, splashing, playing, singing and dancing. Esther described how "With charity we usually give second hand shoes, send clothes that we don’t want or things we don’t need. There’s a place for that, because it’s practical, but here it was amazing to be able to take children who live in the worst of the worst conditions, and actually give them the best of the best". As a sobering contrast to this experience, the following afternoon consisted of a trip to the ghettos to visit one of the older boys. He lives in one tiny hot room, with one bed. Most of the 8 people that he shares with just sleep on the floor, and it was hard to imagine how there was even room for that. It costs about £100 to do one of these trips for 30 children. Obviously there’s various ways you can quantify what £100 can do in Haiti. It would buy around 16 food parcels or 15 footballs, but to be able to give these boys the time of their life for a day is priceless. Please find out more about the project we support in Haiti, or consider donating to the work out there. Local children invited to a chocolate trail with a difference, collecting Montezuma’s chocolates along the way!
Come along to Priory Park on Easter Saturday and you’ll find a family event with all the trimmings that will make a great highlight to your Easter weekend. From 10 am - 2 pm children can take part in our fantastic Easter Trail, collecting Montezuma’s chocolates along the way and learning about our work with vulnerable children. All proceeds from the event will go to our projects. Entry fee is £3.50 or £6 for two. During the event treats and refreshments will be available including O’Hagan’s sausages, fete games, a bouncy castle and raffle. In the run up to the event Montezuma’s have launched a competition for children between 5-12 years old to design their own Easter Egg. Winners will receive a full size egg with the winning design on it and the top 2 winning entries will be displayed in Montezuma’s stores in Chichester, Brighton, Winchester, Kingston and Spitalfields. Closing date for entries (which are to be handed into the East Street Chichester store) is the 20th March and entry forms are available from either the store or the Children on the Edge office. Call the office on 01243 538530 or e-mail [email protected] with any queries. We'd like to say a huge thank you to Affinity Sutton, Graylingwell Park, Homes and Communities Agency and Linden Homes for their generous sponsorship of the event. Merton House at Glyn School in Surrey have raised a staggering total of £1024.22 for Children on The Edge through a month of fundraising. The school are working towards a full International Schools Award and aim for their students to grow into independent learners who are able to contribute to the society in which they live. In having a fundraising focus for January, the boys in Merton House did just this, and learnt about an innovative sports programme supported by Children on the Edge in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haiti is a desperately poor country. According to UNICEF one in five Haitian children have no access to clean water. Since the earthquake in 2010 many children have ended up living rough on the streets where they are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers, making them vulnerable to traffickers and violent gangs. The boys at Glyn School spent the entire month raising money for boys their own age, living in the slums of Port-au-Prince. The programme they were raising money for provides football coaching, support and counseling. As the children gain a sense of belonging through team sports, they also have access to education, learn from positive role models and are provided with a food package after each practice session to take home. The amount raised by Merton House is enough to fund 819 children for a week’s worth of football coaching and food parcels. The Glyn boys used various ideas and events to reach their goal. These included a a sponsored silence, a sponsored 'Keepy Uppy' on the school field, a day spent with uniforms turned inside out, the hosting of a fiercely contested cross bar challenge and the running of a chess and X Box clubs for a week. We’d like to say a huge thank you to Merton house for their contribution, and will be keeping them posted on what their money has achieved. Find out more about our work in Haiti, and think about donating to the project. Laily and her friend collecting oysters. Laily lives in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Poverty is rife in this country and UNICEF estimate that over 5 million Bangladeshi children aged 5-14 work to support their families or themselves. Since Laily’s father was taken ill with a critical disease he was no longer able to support her and her sister and brother. Her mother felt helpless and moved to Cox’s Bazar to find a job. She thought she would have more chance here as it is a popular tourist area, but she found nothing and ended up making small amounts of cash by making oyster wreaths and selling them in the market. In order to make these she sent Laily out to collect leaves and oysters from the beach. One day staff from one of the Learning Centres supported by Children on the Edge came to Laily’s house and talked with her mother. They said that she could come and learn at the Centre in the afternoons with no charge, be given free school materials and still have time left in the day to help her mother. Laily started almost straight away. She said at first she was afraid about studying but now she loves it much more than collecting oysters! She describes how every day she prepares homework and goes to school. Here she is given snacks, has time with friends, receives care from the teachers and focuses on what she terms as ‘joyful study’. When she grows up she is hoping to use what she’s learnt to start a career in customer services. Children on the Edge support three Learning centres in the Cox’s Bazar area, enabling 300 young workers to receive an education for two to three hours a day. Here they receive a nutritious meal, attend lessons, freshen up with a wash and have the chance to play and rest with their friends. Of course we don't believe children should have to work, but with the levels of poverty being so severe families have little choice. Sometimes the money earned by these children is the only income they will see. With our Learning Centres children can help their families without entirely missing out on their education. Our aim is to give those children a few hours each day where they can focus on being a 'child' again; to play and learn without the harsh pressures of outside life. Find out more about our work in Bangladesh and donate to our projects. Donna Bosustow has been been fundraising for Children on the Edge since 1999 when she first joined The Body Shop at Home™ who do some fantastic fundraising for our projects.
When she went to The Body Shop at Home™ Christmas Conference last September she heard how some of the projects were threatened with closure unless consultants raised enough money to keep them going. “I sat there and started thinking what can I do to raise a bigger amount of money. I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before and that’s when doing an abseil popped into my head”. After the conference Donna went home and started looking for abseiling places in Cornwall. It was at this point that her 10 year old son Jowan said that he would like to do an abseil to raise money for Children on the Edge as well. Donna booked them both in for December and they both set about raising money. “On the day it was very, very cold, windy, very rainy. I was a little nervous and Jowan was very nervous but we walked up to the top of the old granite quarry and we did it. We both really enjoyed it and in the end we did six abseils between us,not forgetting the climbs back up to the top!” “I was very proud of myself but even more proud of Jowan who at age 10 helped to raise over £500. At the beginning of the abseil he was so scared, but he was smiling by the end of it”. Donna and Jowan have smashed their fundraising target and raised a fantastic £560! This money will pay for 112 children from the slums of Haiti to attend the sports programme supported by us for a week, each receiving a food parcel to take home! If you or anyone you know is interested in fundraising for Children on the Edge then please contact Euan Clarke, our Community Fundraiser. Back in October we posted up a photo of a pile of wood waiting be transformed into a primary school for a small Chin community in Burma. At this time the children had no chance of getting an education. We are happy to report that the school is now built and open for classes! The school was due to be opening in November but a delay in harvest meant that all the villagers were tied up working in the fields throughout most of that month. Now the school is built they have held a community celebration and got started on their learning. Cheery Zahau, our representative in Burma says “All the villagers and those in the nearby villages are so grateful as they can send their children to the school too. Next they would love to raise money for high school teachers”. This Chin community in this tiny village in Burma have been the target of persecution and oppression for many years from the Burmese military regime. The village is situated just 3 miles from an area where one of the main Burma Army Battalions are posted. These soldiers force tax, labour and food from the villagers and consequently many people have left the village. Despite years of campaigning for a road to be built, there is no transportation out of the village so before this school was built the children remaining in the village had no way of getting to schools further afield. The new primary school has four teachers and provides education for 84 children. Please find out more about our work with the Chin people of Burma or donate to our projects. The news of the release of political prisoners in Burma on 13th January came a day after the announcement of a ceasefire with the Karen ethnic group. The international media have been praising Thein Sein for these steps and many of our supporters have been asking us whether these changes will have an impact on our work with displaced children both within and on the borders of Burma. While Children on the Edge welcome these steps towards democracy, the reports on the ground until recently have been showing that ethnic cleansing has actually increased. Our director Rachel Bentley says “Burma is not a democracy yet, it’s more of a possibility than it’s ever been, but these are just small steps towards change. Our hope is that the recent ceasefire agreements with various ethnic groups will hold, but only time will tell”. Representative of the Karen National Union, Bwa Bwa Phan has described how the number of people forced to flee their homes has doubled in the past year from around 70,000 to almost 150,00. The use of rape, even against children by the Burmese army has increased. She also tells stories of unarmed villagers being exectuted, schools mortar bombed and aid being blocked to the internally displaced. At a presentation in London, Jack Dunford of the Thai Burma Border Consortium described how the media coverage of the recent moves by the government is actually having an adverse affect on the refugee community from Burma. Seeing the news headlines, donors are making the assumption that the troubles are over, and that displaced peoples can return to a peaceful and democratic homeland. Consequently financial contributions are falling. So it is this situation that the children we work with are living in, not a situation that is on the cusp of being resolved. Even if and when there is genuine political change and significant moves towards peace, we will be investing our efforts into the returning refugee community who form such a fundamental part of the fabric of Burma. We will support them to rebuild their lives, homes and communities. Please find out more about our projects for children in Burma as well as those that have fled to Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Your ongoing support is invaluable. |
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