Caring for Children | Reflections

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Hans and Melinda were talking to EVERYONE……

Filed under: Caring for Children, Health & Wellbeing — Leave a comment

September 20, 2010

Hans and Melinda are talking to EVERYONE…

… at a TED Exchange about the MDGs that is being broadcast live from New York all over the world. Hans Rosling, the father of Gapminder, is like a wonderful grandfather storyteller. He is wise, funny, a statistician. Right now he is overflowing with love for the exhilarating truths about what the MDGs are accomplishing. He is passionate and is making complex epidemiology easy and showing us what is really happening in terms of child mortality. He showed us progress in Kenya- data out just last Friday show a HUGE drop in mortality. He and then discusses Switzerland, Thailand and Egypt. Great success stories in the long-term….Ghana and Kenya are on their way up, yet there are standstill countries that needs help. He is showing family size decreasing with child mortality increasing and he is narrating it like a horse race …. Some people are laughing out loud. He is praising Friday’s report on MDG progress…no wait…. he is saying some of it is crap now, tearing out the flawed page and recommending the report to all! His logic flies but everyone is following it. Now he has moved on: child mortality can drop by 50% with female education, and the effect is seen in 15 years. He just gave us hope for women and is now on to the environment….the fertility reduction is ESSENTIAL to save the the planet, so all the things we are about fit together, and they can be done. See Hans for yourself….

I have been following Melinda Gates blog and have felt an affinity with her values; the way she is emphasizes the importance of story to produce truth and hope, and her emphasis on the well-being of women and children, so I think I am going to enjoy this. She is starting her TED by talking about hope and er…Coke? It is a fair bit of airtime on Coke’s successful business model, and while I get that, this is not what I expected. Key strategies are use of real time data, local franchising and incentives, and great marketing that is aspirational. These insights can, are, and should be applied to realization of the MDGs. She is making the link to an Ethiopian program where child mortality has dropped dramatically because if health extension workers…..Now Melinda is having us watch a Coke add… it is moving. Still, I reflect on our recent campus conversation inspired by Michael Pollan’s , “In Defense of Food,” and I am cognizant of all the obesity and health problems caused by consumption of colas, and corporate food models generally. So I’m not sure “I’d like to buy the world a coke…” — I would rather teach the world to sing or plant a garden and I do think it is important to remember that the person who dreamed of teaching the world to sing came first. Probably Melinda knows this…I think we grew up on the same songs…Now she is on to open defecation …a serious health problem but the solution, toilets, have to be marketed socially. The same with male circumcision…..Now she is addressing Polio and how local data can be used to prevent outbreaks. Unfortunately donors are losing patience with polio just when we are so close to succeeding. See Melinda for yourself….

The takeaway for this session for me is that in order to be informed citizens people from all disciplines need to understand health statistics the way they understand football or baseball or soccer stats….We also need to learn from successes from all sectors, including business, and, I would add, we should also remember and emulate the incredibly legacy of civil society and rights-based movements.

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Ethiopia, February 2007: Visiting Programs for Vulnerable Children

Filed under: Around the World & Back Again, Caring for Children, Health & Wellbeing — Leave a comment

February 28, 2007

During my first visit to Ethiopia I was working with partners from Save the Children and had a chance to visit their programs for vulnerable children. Some of these children had lost a mother or father due to HIV/AIDS, some had lost both. Some were HIV positive, some were not. Some had watched their parents die with little help and no pain relief. While many children facing this situation are taken in to the loving care of the extended African family, these children had fallen through the cracks. Many of them experienced the ravages of hunger, poverty and abuse, on top of the pain of parental loss. The programs we visited were working with these children and their caretakers to assist them with shelter, food, education, health care, psychosocial support, legal assistance, and income generation activities.

Education: The school was made of corrugated tin. There were about 270 children in three small rooms. We stooped to enter to find tables in neat lines on the dirt floor, school supplies in good order, and children in matching uniforms singing for us! As I scanned the room it was like a roomful of kinds anywhere, some singing out of duty, others pure joy. But it was different than the classrooms I was used to also. Among these children, who are all here because they need some kind of help, a few stood out as needing more. I pause here, because I resist describing the telltale signs of damage on a child. The front room was windowless, but had both a doorway and a hole in the roof to let in light. We were led in to the room behind, darker still with no egress, where the older children were working on reading and math. They stood to attention when we entered, except for a girl in the front row who looked to be about nine (likely she was older), who kept at her arithmetic. She caught me looking at her and offered me her notebook. Rows of arithmetic. Getting them right. I looked at the simple structure, breathed in the thick heat in this back room, and wondered at what it would be like to study here all day. Yet real learning was taking place.

Selling Eggs

Income generation: We visited an income generation project where the community was keeping chickens and harvesting eggs to eat and sell. They were doing well and had a big basket of eggs for sale to show for it.

Down the road at the chicken farm we were regaled with the story of how the women were opening a restaurant. They were so proud to be making money and taking care of their families.

Dance Club

Psychosocial Support-DANCE! We also visited a youth club that is oriented toward providing recreation, psychosocial support and education about how to stay healthy and AIDS free. This group had specialized in dance, and they became so good that they won a number of competitions and had had a chance to travel together to Cuba to dance! The school drama club joined in with acts and songs related to healthy lifestyles, addressing the stigma that they sometimes experience, and other topics of their choosing. It was great to see these young people excelling in a physical activity and supporting each other.

School Garden

Food: While all kinds of food assistance is taking place here, from breakfast programs to food distribution to households, one wonderful and hopeful program we saw was a school garden when children in vulnerable situations grow their own food, learn gardening skills, and benefit from enjoying it also.

It is sobering to know that programs like these are reaching only a small proportion of children who need them. But being with these children, even in this cursory way, made me want to work very hard in the following weeks and months to make a difference for them.

Based on journal entries and emails from February 2007.

Tags: Ethiopia

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