Party Time!

To most children in the UK, December 25th means a holiday, presents, turkey, stockings and big family gatherings.  But for children all over the developing world it's just one more day to survive -  no presents, feasts or holiday cheer.  If you could throw a Christmas party for thousands of vulnerable children, would you?

We would!

El Salvador Launches New Strategy Against Child Abuse

In 1980 a group of 11-year old boys in El Salvador made a simple agreement: to stick together and defend one another on the dangerous streets they called home. They called themselves Mara Salvatrucha. Today, it’s one of the deadliest gangs in the western hemisphere and has more than 25,000 members across Central America. Street children aren’t just victims of violence. Because of their vulnerable situations they’re perfectly primed to be recruited into gangs, or even form them.

El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America. It’s slightly bigger than Wales, but with 7 million people. A majority of Salvadorans work on farms, usually growing coffee, and many parents send their children out to work in the fields as extra labourers to help feed the family. Extreme poverty causes all kinds of problems within families, and as our regular readers will know the number children who are abused in their own homes is scarily high. These children so often end up fleeing their homes and living a life on the streets, where they aren’t expected to survive longer than about four years… if glue sniffing, disease or malnutrition don’t kill them, violence often will.

Abandoned Babies Part III - Interview

Viva interviews Rogers Mbaziira, who works with our city-wide network CRANE in Kampala, Uganda. Part of Rogers’ job is to work with a group of network members – churches, homes for abandoned babies and other projects – that are committed to putting abandoned babies into local families. (Learn more about this group, called Families For Children.) That means lots of networking between projects and churches and families, with some interesting results. Go ahead, listen in...

Viva: Rogers, you have an amazing job. Can you tell us what your normal day looks like?

RM: I used to visit the foster families a lot, but now more of my time is spent on ‘mobilisation’. Most parents call in and some email FFC for advice. I spend most of my time replying to them, and often that involves referring them to different agencies or projects that can help. That’s why it’s so important to work as a network, because we have these other contacts we can put them in touch with.