Christine’s story: Escaping poverty through education in post-earthquake Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 31 August 2010 – Christine, 14, lives in a camp for displaced people near the international airport here in the Haitian capital. “The only thing I know is that I know nothing,” says this energetic girl, who cites Socrates as her motivation for going to school.

“A person without education is a life without examination,” she says, paraphrasing the ancient philosopher. “You have to study and study to be a big philosopher, a great intellectual.”

And Christine has done just that, even though she was out of school for three months following the earthquake that struck Haiti in January, destroying her home and displacing her family.

Siblings not in school

Christine’s tattered notebooks, filled with detailed anatomy sketches, are a testament to her desire to become a doctor.

“I want to see with my own eyes what’s in the body and understand how my heart beats,” she says. “Like the Haitian singer named Jean-Jean Roosevelt says, if we give the world to women, the world would be marvelous, because girls have hearts.”

And Christine’s heart goes out to her siblings, who are not in school.

Her 15-year-old brother, Jean Renee, has been out of school since just before the quake, when he was forced to drop out. His mother could not afford to pay the school fees and had to make the difficult choice of sending just one of her three children to classes. Now Jean Renee goes to a family friend’s garage each day to work as a mechanic’s apprentice.

“If I cannot send him to school, I want him to at least learn a trade and stay out of trouble,” says his mother.

Meanwhile, Christine’s sister Afenyoose, 9, longs to go to school but cannot because it is simply too expensive.

‘My mother is my life’

Christine attends one of the few public schools in the country where fees are relatively affordable. But most of Haiti’s schools are private, creating a major barrier to education.

“I feel very, very sad that I go to school and my little sister doesn’t,” says Christine. “I try to teach her what I’ve learned every evening when I come home from school.”

Even for Christine, however, there are barriers to education. For example, teacher absenteeism is a reality in Haiti, because many teachers do not have the resources to get to their jobs.

“I sometimes don’t want to go to school because our teachers are not there,” says Christine. “My mother says, ‘Go to school, there may be teachers who will be in the classroom.’ She always gives me the strength…. My mother is my life.”

In the displacement camp, Christine’s mother sells second-hand tennis shoes that she gets on consignment. She meticulously cleans them with a toothbrush. This is how she supports her family and pays her daughter’s school fees. Her objective is to get out of the camp and give her children a better life.

“My mother wasn’t able to study. This is why she wants us to go school, so we don’t go through the same difficulties she did,” says Christine.

Rebuilding schools

The earthquake that shook Haiti destroyed or damaged some 4,000 schools. UNICEF’s priority in education has been to re-establish these schools as quickly as possible.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, temporary learning spaces were set up in large tents with water and sanitation facilities adapted to children’s needs. These temporary tents are being transformed into semi-permanent structures.

“I went to see my school after the quake,” Christine recalls. “The primary school next to our school had collapsed on top of my school, crushing a part of my classroom and the head teacher’s office. Now we are in learning in a tent, and it’s very hot.”

It’s clear that education is Christine’s lifeline – as it could be for all of Haiti’s children.

“I want the government to rebuild our schools, because there are children who will come after us,” she says. “Without education, there is no life, because education elevates man to the dignity of his well-being.”

See the video and the original article on UNICEF’s website at : http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_55829.html

A Former Cambodian Child Soldier Now Making Life Safer for Others

Siem Reap, Cambodia (CNN) — Maneuvering slowly through grassy Cambodian terrain, a caravan of 20 men and women is on a search-and-rescue mission. Dressed in military fatigues, they are guided by a fearless leader who calculates every step and ensures the safest path for his comrades.

It takes just minutes for the unit to confront the first of many hidden targets: a muddied 20-year-old land mine buried a few inches beneath the ground.

“This is an active land mine made from Russia. [If] we step on [it] … it explodes and cuts the leg off,” says Aki Ra, leader of theCambodian Self Help Demining team. He and his group are working to make their country safer by clearing land mines — many of which Aki Ra planted himself years ago.

Aki Ra, a Cambodian native who does not recall his birth year, was a child soldier during the communist Khmer Rouge regime, a genocidal crusade responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Cambodians during the 1970s. He was raised by the army after being separated from his family during the internal conflict.

Around age 10, Aki Ra estimates, he was given a rifle that measured his own height. Soon after, he was taught to lay land mines.

For three years, Aki Ra worked as a mine layer for the Khmer Rouge. He then did the same job for the Vietnamese army that overthrew his village.

“I maybe planted 4,000 to 5,000 land mines in a [single] month,” said Aki Ra, who says he’s about 40 years old now. “We planted them all over the place.”

Watch a slideshow of the some young landmine victims whom Aki Ra has helped

According to the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, an estimated 4 million to 6 million land mines were laid in Cambodia during three decades of conflict. The mines were planted to defend strategic military locations, target warring opponents and deny the use of roads.

“I had [bad] feelings, because sometimes we were fighting against our friends and relatives,” Aki Ra said. “I felt sad when I saw a lot of people were killed. A lot of people were suffering from land mines. [But] I did not know what to do, [because] we were under orders.”

Approximately 63,000 civilians and soldiers have been in accidents involving land mines and other explosive weapons, according to the Cambodian Mine Victim Information System. Nearly 19,000 of them were killed. Today, Cambodia reportedly has one amputee for every 290 people, one of the highest ratios in the world.

When the United Nations came in the early 1990s to help restore peace to Cambodia, Aki Ra saw an opportunity to begin undoing the damage he and others had done. He started training with the U.N. and helping them clear mines.

It was around this time he got the name he goes by today. He was born Eoun Yeak, but he was so skilled at clearing mines that his supervisors began comparing him to AKIRA, a heavy-duty appliance company in Japan. One reportedly commented, “He works just like an AKIRA.” The name stuck.

Aki Ra estimates that he and his group have cleared more than 50,000 land mines and unexploded weapons.

In 1993, one year after working with the U.N., Aki Ra decided to begin clearing mines alone.

“Some of the areas I was clearing were places where I used to plant mines before,” he said. “I didn’t have any equipment. … I clear by knife, by stick.”

For Aki Ra, this bare-hands technique “wasn’t dangerous. It was easy.”

But easy didn’t mean legal. The method was not in accordance with international standards, which requires protective gear and other professional equipment. So in 2005, he went to the United Kingdom to receive formal training and accreditation.

In 2008, Aki Ra formed his nonprofit demining organization. Comprised of native Cambodians, it includes former soldiers and war crime victims. One of the workers is an amputee who lost a leg to a land mine.

“[Our] goal is to clear land mines in rural villages for the people who need the land for building houses or farming or building schools,” Aki Ra said.

Aki Ra and his organization devote all of their donated funds to clearing Cambodia’s rural “low-priority” villages. These villages, populated primarily by poor farmers, do not always receive first dibs for minefield clearance projects because of their remoteness and limited traffic. At times, they’re completely overlooked.

“Villagers report land mines every day, and they ask us to destroy [them],” Aki Ra said. “The people are afraid of mines. Whether there are a lot of land mines or only a few, [we] still have to clear the area so that the people in the village can be safe.”

Kuot Visoth, chief of Prey Thom village, was relieved when the team arrived in early July to clear his village.

“I know the area around the school has a lot of land mines, and I am afraid that when the children come to school and play, they will step on them, or the villagers’ buffaloes grazing in the area would be killed,” Visoth said.

Aki Ra estimates that he and his group have cleared more than 50,000 land mines and unexploded war weapons such as bombs and grenades. The Cambodian government says there are 3 million to 5 million mines still undiscovered.

Many of Aki Ra’s recovered land mines and unexploded weapons are on display at a museum in Siem Reap. For $2, visitors can touch defused mines and bombs as well as AK-47 rifles and war uniforms.

“I had an idea to open a land mine museum to teach people to understand about war, land mines,” he said. “Even though the war [is] finished, [these explosives] still kill people, and the land cannot be used.”

Also at the museum is an orphanage that Aki Ra and his wife, Hourt, opened about a decade ago. Roughly 100 children, some injured by land mines, have been cared for over the years. The orphanage provides food and shelter for the children and sends them to public school.

“I brought them to the museum because I could provide them with [a] better situation,” Aki Ra said. “If I didn’t help them, they would have a very difficult life.”

The orphanage’s first resident, Sot “Tol” Visay, lost a leg to a mine. He was living on the street when Aki Ra was demining in his province. Aki Ra offered Visay a home, and Visay has spent the past seven years living there.

“This place has been very good to me,” said Visay, now 21. “Mr. Aki Ra does not want anything from me. Instead, he encourages all people here to study, to gain knowledge.”

Hourt died last year from a stroke, leaving Aki Ra to care for his three biological children and 27 orphans ages 10 to 20. Aki Ra is thankful to have caretakers, teachers, a chef and a driver who help look after the children during his demining missions, which can last up to 25 consecutive days every month.

“All the children living in my center I consider as my own children. They call me father,” said Aki Ra, whose efforts in Cambodia will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary, “A Perfect Soldier.” “I have told them about my personal life. They understand all about my history. I tell the children that they should study hard, do good acts and love each other.”

Want to get involved? Check out the Cambodian Self Help Demining website at www.cambodianselfhelpdemining.org and see how to help.

To See the original article visit: http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2010/07/a-cambodian-child-soldier/

Founding a Charity at 6, and Walking Across the Country for It at 12

By James C. Mckinley Jr.
Published: July 27, 2010

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. — He cuts a tiny figure in the vastness of the upland desert, the expanse of scrub and brush and saguaro cactuses and red ragged mountains. He is a red-headed boy with a sunburned nose and sunglasses, and he moves with a step not graceful, nor terribly fast, but steady and determined, his mouth set in a hard line.

The boy, Zachary L. Bonner, has walked nearly 1,950 miles from his home outside Tampa, Fla., to this spot in the desert, and he intends to walk another 500 miles or so to the Pacific Ocean, all to raise money for homeless children.

At 12 years old, he is something of a prodigy among do-gooders. This is the third and longest trek he has organized to raise money for the Little Red Wagon Foundation, the charity he started when he was 6 to help get water to people after Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004.

“He’s just like every other kid, except he likes to do community service work for some odd reason,” said his mother, Laurie Bonner, who walks with her son, taking turns with a family friend. “He likes doing it. It’s weird.”

Zachary acknowledges that his determination to walk 2,478 miles is a little out of the ordinary for a boy his age. Many of the children in his neighborhood back in Valrico, Fla., he says, do not understand it. His mother said that since he started his charity work, he had made few friends his own age; the people closest to him are college students and adults who admire his work.

“Some kids are really into baseball, and that is what they do seven days a week,” Zachary says as he takes a water break in the 100-degree heat. “This is what I enjoy doing.”

His efforts have not gone unnoticed. Some Hollywood producers have bought the rights to his life story so far and this summer started shooting a feature film, directed by David Anspaugh of “Hoosiers” fame and produced by the Philanthropy Project. His mother declined to say how much Zachary was paid, but she did say that he gave it all to the Little Red Wagon Foundation.

He counts among his fans and supporters Elton John, who has pledged $50,000 if Zachary makes it to Los Angeles.

Zachary barely cracks a smile when he talks about being invited to Mr. John’s concert in Tucson this week. Asked about the future, Zachary says he would like to go to Harvard and become a prosecutor. “It seems like a career I would really enjoy,” he says.

The trek is a family affair. Zachary, his mother and a family friend, Matt Chesney, 20, sleep in a donated R.V., rising about 3:30 every morning. Zachary says he usually eats a bowl of cereal and tries to start walking by 5 a.m., before the heat becomes unbearable. His mother and friend take turns following him in a Volkswagen Beetle with his sponsors plastered on the side and a red wagon affixed to the top. One walks beside him while the other drives behind.

He tries to cover at least 20 miles a day, and has worn out five pairs of shoes since he started in late December. The main enemies, he says, are boredom and fatigue. “You get bored walking down the road for hours at a time,” he says as he trudges in the high desert dust here along Highway 70. “You can only listen to so much music.”

To pass the time, he listens endlessly to Elton John, Owl City, Lady Gaga and Mika on his iPhone. He also sends messages over Twitter to more than 1,600 followers. He snacks on apples and granola bars, but waits until the afternoon to eat a large meal, usually donated by restaurants like Chili’s.

Still, as he crosses the great deserts of West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, his mother has grown concerned about his health. “He’s lost a lot of weight,” she said as she walked behind him. “He’ll take off his shirt and you can see his ribs.”

Ms. Bonner, 43, a real estate agent and investor, said she had been hoping for years that her son would grow out of this charitable phase. Every year, she asks if he would like to take a break from his mission and go to a local school with children his own age.

But he prefers to study online, through a company called K12, because he can finish his classes quickly and have more time for charity work.

“I have parents that ask me all the time: How do you get them involved?” she said. “I don’t think you can. Unless the kid loves that thing they are doing, there is no way. I used to think it would end, but now I think maybe this is what he’s supposed to do.”

The Little Red Wagon Foundation mostly provides school supplies, food, clothing and toys to homeless children. In 2008, tax records show, the organization raised about $53,000 and spent $5,600 to feed about 800 homeless families during the holidays and to provide the children with toys. It also spent $2,200 on teaching supplies in a poor district and backpacks for orphans. It ended the year with $50,000 in the bank.

This year, Ms. Bonner said, Zachary has received pledges of cash or in-kind donations of about $120,000 from various sponsors.

Along his trip, he has held special events for homeless children, including taking a group to an amusement park in Dallas.

“I feel we should meet their basic needs but take it a step further and meet their kid needs,” he said as he slogged across the desert. “I feel it’s important for everyone to have the opportunity to just be a kid.”

See the original article at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28walkingboy.html?_r=1

Seu Jorge Brings Universal Change to Brazil -From Homeless in a Favela to International Music Star

BY JORDAN LEVIN
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com

On his latest album, Seu Jorge and Almaz, 40-year-old Brazilian singer Seu Jorge dares to cover Michael Jackson’s Rock With You, and turns the King of Pop’s sunny disco celebration into a sultry, enigmatic statement so much his own that it’s almost unrecognizable.

“When we decided to make this album, we decided to represent the whole world,” says the gravelly voiced Jorge from his home in Sao Paulo. “It is very hard to make a cover of Michael Jackson . . . but I took the challenge.”

The challenge is one for which Jorge, who opens a United States tour Friday at the Fillmore Miami Beach, feels both he and his country are ready. “There’s a new movement, a new concept in Brazil,” he says. “Everything is starting to change. . . . Brazil has the opportunity to earn a following in the world. I make Brazilian music, but this music has a great community around the world. I want to make music that is less traditional, more universal.”

As Brazil, headed by former factory worker Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, takes an increasingly influential place on the world political and economic stage, one of the most compelling and original artists to emerge there in the past decade is a product of the appalling slums that represent the country’s most stubborn problems. As intrinsically and proudly Brazilian as Jorge is, his career owes as much to international recognition as national fame. And to Jorge’s own confidence in his music, his culture, and the drive and creativity that has lifted him up from the depths. “Getting out of the favelas is everyone’s aspiration,” Jorge told The Miami Herald in 2005. “How you do it is up to you.”

Jorge Mario da Silva (Seu means “Mr.”) grew up in a grinding ghetto on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He had an affectionate family and a percussionist father who inspired him to be a musician. But after Jorge’s younger brother was killed in a drug-gang shootout, the family was driven onto the streets. As a teen, Jorge became homeless and addicted to drugs. He was saved after he began sleeping outside a theater, which eventually took him in, and began training and using the teenage musician in their productions. At the same time, Jorge began playing an adventurous mix of samba, funk and rock, making two records that were hits in Brazil.

His breakthrough came when he got the role of the menacing gangster Knockout Ned in the critically acclaimed 2003 film City of God, about the Rio de Janeiro favela of the same name. His performance so impressed director Wes Anderson that he cast Jorge to croon David Bowie songs in Portuguese in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/23/1741921/seu-jorge-brings-universal-change.html

From Child Soldier to Head Girl and Global Advocate.

When Juliet was just 12 years old she was abducted from her home in Northern Uganda by rebels from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Juliet was held in captivity for six years, taken from Uganda to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. She was forced to marry a senior commander when she was only 14. Juliet says, ‘girls have to get married by force, this is the really bad thing.’

At 16, Juliet became pregnant. Even during her excruciating labour, the LRA moved her constantly. Juliet suffered immense pain for a week before the baby eventually died inside her. It was days before a local doctor performed an operation to remove the baby. There was no anaesthetic, and the doctor used an ordinary razor blade. Juliet explains, ‘When you are pregnant there is no hospital in the bush, if the baby dies inside you they will rip it from you by force. It happened to many girls not just me.’ Unsurprisingly, Juliet passed out from the pain and her subsequent state of health was extremely bad. She developed a fistula and had other complications.

After Juliet escaped from the LRA, one of War Child’s partner organizations helped her locate her family back in Northern Uganda.

Juliet now attends a school in Northern Uganda created especially for girls like her who have missed out on education because of the conflict. She is working hard to catch up on the years of schooling she missed whilst in captivity with the LRA. As she says, ‘When I came back I really wanted to go back to school. I always dreamt about school and my friends from before even when I was in the bush.’

Her efforts are paying off. She has refused to allow her past to shape her future, and her confidence and warmth to the other girls has helped her win the role of Head Girl. Juliet dreams of becoming a nurse and stresses the value of an education, telling us that ‘many girls have been through hardship like me, they are denied an education. If you are not educated, you are nothing.’

To read more please visit War Child at http://www.warchild.org.uk/news/special-visitor-from-uganda

The teenager who makes jewelry from bullets

By Mark Tutton, for CNN
June 24, 2010

Still a teenager, Liberian Lovetta Conto makes jewelry that is worn by the likes of Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry.

But Conto, 17, is no pampered Hollywood fashionista. She grew up in a Ghanaian refugee camp. And rather than using precious stones in her designs, Conto makes her jewelry from the casings of bullets fired during Liberia’s civil war.

Born in Liberia, she was separated from her mother at the age of 18 months as Conto and her father fled the country to escape its civil war. When she was five they made it to Ghana and spent the next nine years living in a refugee camp with 47,000 other people.

“We had to flee to Ghana and leave my mother behind. We thought we would be safer there because our whole country was ruined,” she told CNN.

“I felt alone because I was in another country where I wasn’t really welcome. I always wanted to go back to my country. But you have no choice because your country is in a civil war and it’s the only place you have to be.”

Conto said her father had to leave her with other families while he went to work, trying to earn enough to send her to school.
“I didn’t really go to school because my dad didn’t have the money to pay my school fees, so I stayed home a lot,” she said.
“Sometimes I would go to school without eating. I went to school hungry a lot and there wasn’t much safe drinking water for people to drink and the water made people sick. There was just a little well and you had to get the water from there, and it wasn’t safe.”

to read more please visit http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/23/lovetta.jewelry.bullet.liberia/index.html

Anuradha Koirala rescues Nepalese girls from sex slavery

Following an abusive relationship, Anuradha Koirala was prompted to change her life and the lives of other abused women by creating a shelter named “Maiti Nepal,” which roughly translates to “Mother’s Home.”  The shelter has been able to provide advocacy, legal defense, and rehabilitation to thousands of girls trapped into the sex trade, abused, and exploited.  According to the U.S. State Department, some 10,000 to 15,000 women and girls from Nepal are trafficked to India and sexually exploited each year.

Much of the staff working at Maiti Nepal are former brothel and sex trade survivors themselves, who are now committed to reciprocate the help and healing they were once given.  While the group’s short-term priority is to get the girl’s away from harm, their ultimate goal is to “help girls become economically independent and reintegrated into society.”

Koirala and Maiti Nepal have helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 Nepali women and girls since 1993.

To read the full story of her impressive work and Maiti Nepal please go to: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/29/cnnheroes.koirala.nepal/

As FIFA World Cup 2010 kicks off, Zambian youth journalists speak out

MONGU, Zambia, 11 June 2010 –
By Michal Rahfaldt

For Inonge Sitali, 14, a radio dialogue with peers about the FIFA World Cup 2010 – which kicked off June 11th in South Africa – is more than a casual conversation. It is an opportunity to discuss important gender issues in her local community of Mongu, in western Zambia.

“I disagree with the guys out there who are saying that football cannot be played by girls,” says Inonge. “We all have the right to play any sport.”

The radio discussion is part of ‘World Cup in My Village,’ a youth journalism project supported by UNICEF, the Children’s Radio Foundation and other partners in conjunction with the global football tournament. Young reporters trained by the programme are encouraged to document their lives and speak out about the issues affecting their lives.

Young radio reporters

While some of the boys and girls in the group radio discussion agree with Inonge, others are not so convinced.

“Football is a very hard sport, and it requires maximum power to perform, so girls are not suitable to play it,” says Pedrou Kakorio, 18.

Both Pedrou and Inonge were trained in journalism as part of World Cup in My Village. Along with other adolescents in Mongu, Zambia and the Rubavu district of Rwanda, they received audio recorders, cameras and flip video cameras – and were taught the skills needed to tell their own stories.

The project gives young reporters the opportunity to explore pressing concerns in their communities and share their experiences with the rest of the world. Their audio reports will be broadcast on local, national and international radio stations; and additional content will be posted on the Children’s Radio Foundation website and disseminated via social media platforms.

To read more please click here: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/zambia_53962.html

Street Kids World Cup and the police roundup of kids in South Africa

Just like any other national captain, Wanda Msani is dreaming of glory at the World Cup in South Africa.

But Wanda’s tournament kicked off on 15 March, three months earlier than the Fifa event and for the 14-year-old boy who lives on the streets, there was far more than just a game at stake. “When people walk past us, they look at us like we are dogs. They look down on us like we are not even people, just because we eat from bins,” he says, his eyes burning with anger. “They will see that we can be something.”

More than anything else, Wanda wants to make his father proud, hoping to be allowed to return home to the Umlazi township outside Durban, which he left five years ago, aged just nine. Since then, he has been on the streets – sleeping on pavements, under trees, park benches and alleys with only a cardboard box to offer warmth.   “After my parents separated, my father started drinking all the time,” he says.   “When he got drunk, he would beat me up so badly he wouldn’t stop. I knew I had to run away.”  For Wanda and his team-mates, playing football offers an escape from their hellish lives of constant hunger, an absence of love, the threat of sexual abuse and in which sniffing glue is often the only comfort. But while they hope that football can change people’s perceptions about street kids, it has also brought a new danger to contend with.

The street kids say Durban’s municipal police are forcibly removing children at night and dumping them miles away from town.  Some police reportedly use teargas to disorient the children and make them more submissive. City officials have always denied that this campaign is linked to its World Cup preparations or commented on the alleged abuses. They say the round-ups are driven by the need to curb crime in the city centre.

Workers at Umthombo, a charity which co-organised the Street Child World Cup, say they hope the tournament will remind law enforcement officers that the youngsters are not criminals but traumatised children who need greater care and empathy than many hard-handed officers show.

read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8567522.stm

Mackenzie Bearup

A 16-year-old girl, Mackenzie Bearup contracted a painful disease that would leave most children hopeless and resentful; instead she was prompted to soothe her pain and share a glimmer of hope with the homeless and abused children around her.

The disease, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, leaves the patient in excruciating pain and has no cure. During her treatment, she found that reading books was the greatest escape to help her through. She decided that other children experiencing pain, emotional and physical, could relate so she decided to find a way to help others.

“Reading isn’t just an escape, you can learn a lot, too, and that’s very important for homeless and abused children,” said Bearup. “Staying in high school is one of the things that will help you most in life, to be able to get a job and be able to support yourself.”

Since 2007, Bearup has collected and donated more than 38,000 books for homeless and abused children in six states.  Recently, she launched “Sheltering Books” as she hopes to continue sharing her remedy with the world.

To read more about Mackenzie, visit http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/08/cnnheroes.mackenzie.bearup/

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