The Big Lottery Fund

The Big Lottery Fund has awarded Hope for Children  a grant for its important work in Sri Lanka with one of our partner agencies MENCAFEP.

Supporting children with disabilities & their families, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Batticaloa District is on the Eastern Seaboard of Sri Lanka approximately 400 km south of Colombo. Life for all people is tough as the average annual income is only $1,160. This is made all the worse as the area was devastated by the Tsunami in December 2004. There are around 48,000 disabled people in the district. Not only are there no facilities to help them, but they and their families suffer from extensive discrimination from the wider community.

This project will help to overcome this situation. It will develop five centres offering a variety of services such as pre-schools, school, vocational training, and outreach for families. It also includes nine schemes where able-bodied and disabled children will play and learn together through various activities such as drama, reading and writing, and sports, helping them and their parents. The project also includes a community engagement programme involving lobbying and meetings aimed at changing attitudes.

This project will have a massive impact on a huge number of beneficiaries throughout the District. It will achieve a number of SMART outcomes which include improving the health of these children, giving them a future by providing appropriate skills, and aiding their acceptance into society through reducing discrimination. It will also benefit their families and also local non-disabled children.

Comic Relief

Comic Relief are supporting Hope for Children, in partnership with our partner agency RAINS in Ghana. The Northern Region is deeply impoverished partly because of environmental degradation and a hostile climatic conditions that affects the Programme Area. The struggles of subsistence farming in an area which experiences frequent drought (of up to seven months in a bad year) means that families rarely have excess crops to sell and cash is in short supply. Harsh weather conditions, shallow soil, unreliable water supplies, and bush fires all undermine the capacity of families, whose main economic activity is subsistence farming, to secure livelihoods. Maize and groundnuts are the two major crops which generate inadequate resources to meet all the basic needs of families.

The fostering of girls is a very common practice in this context of poverty; a fostered girl is thus a potential burden to the family with her additional need for food, education, clothing and general care. However, the fostered girl also carries a potential for child labour and therefore adopts this role when she enters the family. In relation to the other children, she is the ‘poor relation’, serving the needs of all family members. Not only is she a domestic worker but she also helps in the field and is often expected to do petty-trading to earn the money for her food. Fostered girls can be easily identified in the villages.

Hope for Children and RAINS are working to prevent the trafficking of children and tackling child labour.  The direct beneficiaries of this project are fostered girls, girls from poor families and fostering aunties in the Savelugu/nanton and west Mamprusi Districts of the Northern Region district of the Northern Region. The project intends to prevent and withdraw 2800 fostered girls (1600 of primary school age and 1200 kayaye respectively) from child labour. Essential to any change in the withdrawal of fostered girls from child labour is the attitudinal change of their aunts who are thus also a primary target group (many ‘aunts’ are former fostered girls who experienced considerable neglect during childhood). As part of this strategy, and working closely with other agencies, the project will also mobilise the children in order to give them a voice in making life choices about their future.

Secondary target groups are people and institutions of influence (change-makers) at community, national and international levels including traditional leaders, Assembly members, women opinion leaders, youth groups, social welfare, education authorities and other government and international agencies.

It should also be noted that rural communities would benefit from any improvement in the health and well being of girls. Neglected fostered girls currently maintain a cycle of poverty in the lives of their own children, and the presence of child labourers in any community undermines community health and pride.  Indirect beneficiaries of this project include many more fostered girls in the whole of the Northern Region whose aunties would be motivated through the radio programmes and durbars to treat them with kindness. Indirect beneficiaries are estimated at 12,000 fostered girls arising out of advocacy efforts and 9,000 others who will benefit from activities arising out of the economic chain.

Walk 2 School

Walk to School is an initiative we have set up through Hope for Children to pay for the education of children from impoverished backgrounds in Uganda and the Philippines.  There are thousands of children in these countries that need your help in order to pay for their schooling.

This is not just down to school fees, many families can not  afford the bus fare for their children to be transported to school, or pencils, uniforms, books in order to attend and learn.  Walk to School is a simple concept, we aim to pay for a childs entire education, not just for one term or one year, in turn we hope it will help them and their family work towards a brighter future.

Why the Philippines and Uganda?  We know that there are many countries throughout the world where families are in desperate need for help to send their children to school, circumstances and chance meetings have lead us to help children in these two countries and  there are thousands more that need help in both.  

Without the funding raised through Walk to School, these children may not have the chance to go to school and will face a future without the basic education that we take forgranted for ourselves and our own children.  It is only £100 to pay for an entire year for one child to attend school the Philippines and £128 in Uganda, including transport, school uniforms, school fees, books, pencils.

We have pledged to fund the education of 100 children over the next 12 years, 50 in Uganda and 50 in The Philippines.

£100 can make a difference now, £1200 can secure a childs future education. So please donate and send a child to school in Uganda or The Philippines now! http://www.justgiving.com/walktoschoolnow

Many thanks for your support.
Chris Hughes
Co - Founder, Walk to School