June 2010

Welcome

Welcome to the June edition of Connect.

Every 3-4 months Connect provides news and features on Child-to-Child activity, to inspire thought and action. If you find it useful, please forward to your colleagues and ask them to sign up.

Latest news from Getting Ready for School (GRS) Project

The school readiness project was initiated by UNICEF and the Trust in 2007. The overall goal was to both increase the child’s readiness for school and the school’s readiness to receive and foster an optimal learning environment for the children. After three years of piloting the project, it was evaluated at the end of 2009 by the American Institute for Research (AIR) in Washington, to determine the project outcomes and impact.

A global review and strategic planning meeting was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 22-25 March 2010, to reflect on the evaluation report and to determine how the evaluation findings could be used to strengthen the project and build on it for future scale up. The overall outcome of the meeting was that the CtC approach is proving effective in contributing to increased access and retention of poor children in school. The approach is especially attractive to governments in the pilot countries because of its cost effectiveness. Most of the pilot countries are hoping to scale up the projects to other geographical areas in the country.

Child-to-Child Training Course

The details have now been finalised.

The Child-to-Child Trust, London in collaboration with Save the Children, Sweden will be holding an international training course between 11- 16 October 2010 in Beirut, Lebanon.

Please see Child-to-Child approaches to children’s participation in health and education: A course for programmers and facilitators for details and how to apply.

Child-to-Child around the world

Partner for Development’s malaria prevention and control program has been supported by the Global Fund and USAID since 2004. PFD works closely with the Ministry of Health’s National Centre for Malaria and Dengue (CNM) to implement malaria prevention and control activities through village volunteers who work as malaria educators in their communities in Kratie, Koh Kong, Stung Treng, Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, Oddar Meanchey, and Pailin provinces of Cambodia.

A network of over 1,000 school teachers train students to disseminate malaria prevention messages to their communities using the Child-to-Child methodology in these provinces.

PfD’s Child-to-Child (CtC) activities began in the mid-1990s as part of integrated water, sanitation, and health work PFD was implementing in north eastern Cambodia. In 2006 PFD adapted its school health curriculum to focus exclusively on malaria, and activities in PFD's School Health Education (SHE) programme have been organised and implemented with a variety of government and NGO partners.

The School Health Education program (SHE) focuses on malaria education for children in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, with the goal to promote positive behaviour change regarding malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment. By using the Child-to-Child methodology, the programme also aims to spread malaria education messages and encourage behaviour change for peers and adults in the community.

The latest data estimates that around 18,000 children in Grades 3, 4, and 5 directly benefit annually from malaria education using the CtC methodology. For more information please visit PfD’s website.

Design for Change Global presents a new innovative contest for school children whereby school children design solutions for the world’s greatest challenges. Following the Child-to-Child methodology, encourage children to get creative and be their own champions of change.

If you have Child-to-Child activities that you would like to share with all of us, please send these to the Trust and we will include in our next newsletter and /or on the website.

Partners & Consultancy

In our quest to widen the network we are eager to update our knowledge of existing partners but also Child-to-Child are seeking new partners globally who are working in our key thematic areas and wish to implement the Child-to-Child Approach. Please either tell us if the work we have you listed as undertaking is no longer relevant or needs updating, or if you are not shown as doing Child-to-Child , we need to know!

In order for us to assist with programme development, training, materials development, monitoring and evaluation and mentoring we need a pool of consultants and advisors who can work with us on the various thematic themes. If you feel you have the experience and skills in our key thematic areas please contact us soon.

A Child to Child approach to children’s participation - the Trust is planning to hold a basic training course in London, possibly in September, for people who are working in child focussed organisations and for practitioners working in Development. If you would be interested in attending please confirm your interest with “Child-to-Child Approach – training course” in the subject line. Details will follow.

Website

We would like to create a space so organisations actively using the child-to-child approach can connect with one another as well as the Child-to-Child Trust to share experiences, skills and information. We want our website to be a place where you can read the latest about Child-to-Child activity and approaches throughout the world and we need your help. We will be surveying all our readers of this newsletter in due course but if you prefer to send us your comments by email or your news or any photos, we very much look forward to hearing from you. Only with your help can we be sure that you and all our partners are getting as much as you would like from our website and network.

Publications

The long awaited French translation of Child-to-Child’s Resource book is now available online to download. We also have a new reader called “Zzzizi drinks blood”. This fantastic reader teaches important health messages on mosquitoes and malaria. It will be available online to download shortly.

Child to Child’s Stories for Health Education and Skills Development: over the years these have been very successful but we now feel they need to be revitalised. We would like to develop new themes and plots and find writers and illustrators. If you have any experience or would like to contribute in any way please contact us.

Obituary

Sadly we mourn the death, aged 90, of Otto Wolff, our chairman from 1989 to 1992 after which he continued as a trustee for a further five years. As Dean of the London University Institute of Child Health, he was greatly influential in the launching and growth of the movement, and he has remained with us as a friend, resource and mentor ever since.

Otto combined an unswerving commitment to social justice, a love and respect for the world’s children and a deep commitment to their wellbeing together with a total aversion of prejudice in any form. All those of us who worked with him at Child to Child loved him and drew inspiration from him. He was supremely approachable, listened to everybody and was always available to offer us wise and gentle advice deriving not only from unrivalled experience but also from the values held by a truly great and good man.