Newsletters
JANUARY 2012
KIDS FOR KIDS - action before words –
The Millennium Goals in practice in Darfur
Long term solutions for children in Sudan
enabling families to stay in their homes,
Simple projects reaching into the heart of families –
Goat loans that bring health and a future.
KIDS FOR KIDS is supporting the sort of projects that people for a long time have said are the only lasting solutions to the problems in Africa: long term, self-sustainable projects, identified by local communities.
North Darfur is isolated – hundreds of miles of bare lands, with virtually no infrastructure. Despite being three times the size of the United Kingdom, Darfur has been ignored by the world, until the terrible conflict which began in 2002. Drought takes its toll of crops and livestock alike. Malnourishment is a way of life for children in rural communities. Villagers, clinging to their homes, can only do so if they can be self sustainable – but help to Darfur is concentrating on emergency aid in the camps only, and even this is failing.
It is possible to help – KIDS FOR KIDS projects, because they are run by the villagers themselves, are enabling families to stay in their homes. One leader told us that families returning to their homes because they had heard we were there and they “thought it would give the village a chance”. There are now 60 Kids for Kids villages where children are healthier, go to school and their mothers have a livelihood.
The Millenium Goals include “halving global poverty, protecting the environment, improving health
and sanitation and tackling illiteracy and discrimination against women”
(DFID – Millennium Development Goals website)
How KIDS FOR KIDS achieves the Millennium Goals: we provide integrated services to maximise their impact. A goat transforms children’s lives. KIDS FOR KIDS lends goats for children to have milk. This contains essential vitamins and proteins and can be sold to pay for water – and education. It costs just £132 to provide 6 goats for a family for two years and 6 of the offspring go to another family, and then another. Over 2000 families are already benefiting from this scheme, and every two years 6 kids are passed on to another family in need by each family. Our Veterinary Scheme, which trains paravets in the villages and provides veterinary drugs, is protecting entire flocks. There is no other veterinary help. Water is the first priority for people and animals. It is scandalous that there is insufficient water for children when there is water underground. Children walk sometimes up to 14 hours, to collect water. By reducing that walking distance to less than 1 hour, KIDS FOR KIDS handpumps have enabled hundreds of children to go to school for the first time. But we need help to provide clean water. Tomatoes, okra and cucumbers are growing near the pumps where before there was just sand. We provide donkeys - the only transport.
The women of the villages are terrified of childbirth. Many die needlessly because there is no medical help. The only help in many villages is a Traditional Birth Attender who does ‘rope delivery’. Our midwives transform the chance of survival – 18 students last year delivered 281 healthy babies during their training! We fund 40 every year - that alone costs £80,000 - but at £2,000 for each midwife it is a real life changing investment. We provide first aid workers at the request of villagers. The simplest hygiene prevents small problems become catastrophies. Children in the UK are helping us provide tree seedlings for long term environmental improvement. Our baobabs are already tall enough to provide shade for students to study under! Villagers are trained in irrigation techniques to prolong the growing season. Blankets, mosquito nets, ploughs and donkeys ambulances - all items with real impact. We are not only helping individual families, we are strengthening communities so that children have the chance of a future.
Help us help children today – not tomorrow
Help us achieve the Millennium Goals Now
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JANUARY 2010
"DARFUR need not be a disaster" says Founder of UK Charity
Whilst the world watches Sudan as the South votes to be an independent country, conditions in Darfur continue to deteriorate. Violence is unreported and aid workers are at risk of kidnap. Yet the children of Darfur are the most deprived in the world. The region is struggling with insecurity and unimaginable - and inexcusable - poverty. For 10 years Kids for Kids has been showing that there is a way to bring lasting change by helping people to help themselves. Patricia Parker MBE, who started the charity in 2001 because of a little 9 year old's 7 hour walk for water, says "People are not asking for charity. They are asking for sustainable help to give their children a start in life. We are showing that you can make a difference even in the current conditions".
"For ten years we have been teaching people how to help themselves, but things are getting worse" says Patricia. "I was shocked to find that the poorest families now earn less than £100 a year in a country where inflation is rocketing. It would be difficult to find poorer people. The Kids for Kids' Programme is unique because we listen to the people and provide what they say will make the biggest difference. Our long term projects address a family's basic needs - water, maternal and healthcare, animal welfare, goats and donkey provide a livelihood, and, dramatically, massive environmental improvements through our extensive and imaginative tree planting programme. Most importantly, we are able to be flexible. Because our funds come mainly from individuals, we are able to act fast and effectively when there is a problem. It is not just families lives that are changed, it is whole communities."
Families from the camps are applying to settle permanently in our villages. They come with nothing, having fled their homes leaving everything behind. We provide each resettled family with the basics - 6 goats, a donkey, blankets, jumpers, a mosquito net and farm tools.Things they say make an immediate difference . "The cost is just £272 - a shockingly small amount to transform children's lives" says Patricia. "In our newest villages, Kheirban B, Abu Neylah and Tekailat, families will be receiving their goats and donkeys this month. Children in Kids for Kids' villages wake up to milk every day."
DECEMBER 2009
Drought is causing hardship already in Darfur - yet the world is ignoring the conditions in which children are living. The message from Founder of Kids for Kids Patricia Parker: "Don't wait until it is too late - do something right now!"
Kids for Kids is calling for help to provide water - handpumps and repairs to handpumps standing idle because villagers do not have the money for spare parts - and for donkeys. "If you have a donkey you can fetch twice as much water, twice as quickly, and travel twice as far" is the message from Patricia.
FEBRUARY 2009
The Trustees of KIDS FOR KIDS heard recently that implementing agents they had commissioned to install handpumps for remote villages, had been expelled from Sudan for breaking the law. "This is a tragedy, not only for us, but for the countless children these pumps should be helping." said Chairman of Trustees, Patricia Parker. "Thankfully TNM reported that they had repaired 30 pumps for us before they left Darfur, and I am awaiting their final report. This is a blow for all INGOs in Sudan."
27th February 2009
Drought in Darfur
29 December 2009
[read full article]
TV Star accepts invitation to be Patron
11 December 2009
[read full article]
NEW FILM A HIT - HOPE IN A TIME OF CONFLICT is the message
1 December 2008
Film gives unique glimpse of life in villages, beyond the camps.
[read full article]
[download PDF]
US FILM A DISAPPOINTMENT
8 July 2008
fILM ON DARFUR produced by WNET in America turns out to be heavily biased. The Trustees of KIDS FOR KIDS were convinced by the Producer of the American film (a British Company called MayaVision introduced to them by the Sudanese Embassy in London) that they would make a film which would show a balanced picture of life in Darfur. Two thirds of the population are still clinging to their lives in the camps - yet virtually no aid reaches them despite often desperate need. Children are born into families where parents have the same ambitions as the rest of the world. To be able to clothe, feed them, make sure they have access to health care -and are educated. Yet these ambitions are beyond the wildest dreams for many families in Darfur - where even the very basic .... the need for water is denied. The only picture that the world has of Darfur is of life in the camps - and our hope was that WNET would show how help can be given to these families out of sight and out of mind. It was not to be. This was a biased film, showing the world once again, one side of the Darfur story, ignoring the plight of so many families beyond the eye of the camera.
NEWSPAPER ANNOUNCEMENT IN KHARTOUM PAPERS
31 December 2006
KIDS FOR KIDS sends greetings to all its supporters in Sudan at EID.
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[download PDF]