Kids for Kids
Supporting projects which
are long lasting, self sustaining and community led
Supporting projects which
are long lasting, self sustaining and community led
KIDS FOR KIDS New Projects
Latest news from Darfur: When there is nothing, Kids for Kids finds a way.
There are now 60Kids for Kids villages in Darfur where villagers are running their own sustainable projects. In 2010 we had to change the ways in which we were working to establish our own small two room office in El Fasher, the regional capital of North Darfur. This was a crucial and important move, enabling us to work even more closely with the communities themselves. Our Programme Manager is a Darfurian and Dr Salim Ahmed Salim is one of the few fully trained veterinary doctors in Darfur. He is assisted by Hassan Mihisi, our Project office and they work through the Kids for Kids Steering Committee which is a separate organisation fully registered and recognised by the Humanitarian Aid Commissiion in Darfur. This enabled us to adopt 3 new communities - Kheirban B, Abu Neylah and Tekailat - within three months of the change over, an extraordinarily short space of time given the complexities of workign in Darfur. We are now able to train villagers to help themselves directly and our administration costs have dropped dramatically with this move to our own offices and organisation.. We lend 6 goats to a family for 2 years - then 6 are lent to another family. The rotation of the goats ensures that families received help directly, and the passing on of the animals as each family builds up a little flock, eventually helps the entire community. By integrating a package of small initiatives the impact of each is magnified. We teach people to look after their animals, and we provide veterinary care. We give mothers donkeys to collect the water, to pull ploughs and carts, and even ambulances. Goats provide milk and a small income, donkeys make travelling possible, helping people to get to market, to plough more land to grow vegetables, to take the sick to hospital. Health care is desperately needed and our midwives and first aid workers are providing an invaluable service. People travel miles to seek their help. Volunteers from each village have been trained as midwives, first aid workers and paravets so that at last there is health care nearby. Children have a chance. Kids for Kids midwives save the lives of mothers and babies every single day. There are first aid workers so that simple problems do not become catastrophies. There are latrines, so fewer children suffer continuous diarrhoea and vomiting. And there is veterinary care. A healthy animal means healthy children. Children in Kids for Kids' villages wake up to milk each day before they go to school. Trees are growing in our community forests - green belts of young healthy drought resistant trees making a lasting difference to the environment. Most important of all, there is a handpump nearby. Water that used to take hours to reach and to carry back by hand. Kids for Kids' aim is to improve the lives of children by helping villagers to help themselves and to be accountable to each other, to provide the simple basics every family needs, but which, in Darfur, are an impossibility. We are showing how to transform children's lives ONE GOAT AT A TIME WE DON'T BELIEVE IN CHARITY WE BELIEVE IN HELPING PEOPLE TO HELP THEMSELVES If you give a child a goat, a strong donkey for a midwife, or help us to make sure children sleep under a mosquito net and a blanket each night, they will not die of malaria (still the biggest killer in Africa) or suffer chest infections. They will not be malnourished, like every other child in the villages of Darfur - and they will wake each morning with the chance of a better future. It can be done - Kids for Kids is showing how. This year we have adopted our 60th village. MUGABIL is one of the smallest villages in Darfur, with under 300 families, but these families are livingin conditions of extreme hardship. Hopefully is about to change for the better - permanently. But we need help to make these lasting changes. We desperately need your help to help the children of Darfur. KIDS FOR KIDS 2001 TO 2010 Our projects are helping: 123,735 people living in 339 villages and sub villages We have trained: 29 village Development committees, 39 Animal Loan Committees, Animal Husbandry Training for 5,021 people
KIDS FOR KIDS 2010 - 2011
First Aid Workers training course - 40 volunteers Midwives Training Course - 40 volunteers - training started January 2012 Tree Planting Programme - 50,000 seedlings Main Tree Nursery El Fasher - further improvements including shade tunnels and water storage tank - completed Installation 10 new handpumps, rehabilitation 30 handpumps Animal Husbandry Training Distribution of goats & donkeys Mosquito Nets - 1st & 2nd generation beneficiaries Jumpers for 3 - 5 year olds Solar Lanterns - for midwives & the Children's Shepherd Committees KIDS FOR KIDS is the only the only charity created specifically to help the children of Darfur long term. Throughout the past 10 years, and right through the conflict, we have continued to help communities living beyond the camps. This is why the support that Kids for Kids is giving is so crucial. We are enabling people to help themselves. We have provided training for all the KIDS FOR KIDS villages, each year, PLUS the provision of goats and donkeys to 10% of the families in each community - enabling over 200,000 people to stay in their homes. Leaders of communities have told us that people are moving to Kids for Kids villages because they 'have a chance'. We need help to support as many villages as possible in the coming months.
We were helping children in Darfur BEFORE the conflict started, and we will continue to help desperately needy families long after peace returns. KIDS FOR KIDS was supporting communities in Darfur before the violence erupted; we are known - and welcomed - by the authorities - and they acknowledge that Kids for Kids will be helping children long after the conflict is over. The team in Darfur who implement our projects is headed by Dr. Salim Ahmed Mohammed Salim the new Programme Manager, working directly with networks of villagers themselves. His reports show that the affect of our goat loans alone is dramatic in the way the provision of animals helps families to withstand potential disasters. We need to be able to provide more animals as soon as possible. We work with the communities, enabling them to run the projects, thus ensuring sustainability. We are working through organisations such as the villagers marketing network who we train in book keeping and accountability. If we give up ,many many children will lose their one chance of a better future. By constantly finding new ways of delivering our projects, we have been able to continue, even during the worst violence. The training we provide to communities is essential if our projects are to be long term. Communities run them themselves, selecting (with our guidance and using criteria we agree together) committees which are answerable to the village as a whole. Training covers accountability, book keeping, animal husbandry, running a revolving veterinary drug scheme - and much more. This ensures long term sustainability. We are seeking support for the very basics of life - water, food, blankets, health care - to give these families a real chance. VILLAGES SPONSORED INDIVIDUALLY - because the aim of our combined projects is to transform each individual community you can now sponsor a whole village. Additional to our main Programme, we are appealing for 2 blankets for each family, in all of our villages, and a new initiative - Tops for Toddlers. We are providing warm jumpers for 3 and 5 year olds in each of the poorest families. Children are malnourished this year in particular following the recent severe drought, and are especially susceptible to chest infections. BUT - to make the project sustainable - we will be teaching their mothers to knit. To support Tops for Toddlers and the Kids for Kids Knitting Circles please ask for our latest Gift List. It is not easy at the best of times ensuring projects run in such a remote region, and the continuing violence creates endless problems. Recently for example there was no telephone or internet communication outside El Fasher, North Darfur. Can you imagine what this would do to the economy, say of Edinburgh, if communications broke down. There is no railway to El Fasher and it is hundreds of miles by road to Khartoum. BUT the worrying news is that the price of animals is still going up. This is very bad news for families in Darfur. We are all facing serious inflation, the results of the international financial crisis, but perhaps the problems facing families in Darfur will help put our problems into perspective? In Darfur mothers have had to sell even the blankets for their small children if they need medicine for their family. A stark choice it is difficult to contemplate.
KIDS FOR KIDS IS THE ONLY HOPE FOR REMOTE VILLAGES
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