Early Encounter means 2 children saved from the streets EVERY DAY!

“I’m a numbers man, and these numbers are really something - 712 children are no longer on the streets of Latin America as a result of Viva and the networks this year. That’s nearly two kids every day!” Brian Wilkinson, our Chief Operating Officer and main numbers man, has just recently returned from an Early Encounter programme visit in Peru. He particularly recalls one centre in Lima…

When we arrived, the hall was filled with young girls and boys, cradled babies, mothers, fathers and even grandparents. Many parents were still arriving even after the event had already started, some sweaty and tired from having to hurry from their jobs out on the streets. However, their faces were lit up with smiles, despite the fatigue, knowing that in just a few minutes they would all take part in the celebration of something very special: their child was going to be given the opportunity to go to school for the first time in their lives!

Breaking taboos in Bangalore.

Many people in the UK think that children are learning about sex too early. Magazines, television and the Internet have made it a familiar topic for most young people before they even reach secondary school. But in Bangalore, India, it seems that children may be learning about it too late.

“Sex education does not happen in most of India,” says Karuna Sagili, from Viva’s Delhi office. “All matters of the body and sexuality and sex are seen as taboo. In one school in Bangalore the teachers have stuck some pages together in the biology textbooks, so that children would not look at the pictures often. It is photos of a man and a woman, and all the parts of the body.”

Simon says ... keep children safe!

Throughout the years of my childhood I played the game ‘Simon says’ hundreds of times. You know – Simon says wave your arms in the air, Simon says stick out your tongue... But never once did I play it as part of a lesson on sexual and physical abuse.

Just before Christmas I visited a school in Manchay (a district in the desert-like hills above Lima, Peru) that is using all kinds of games, songs and stories to teach children about the value of their bodies. On the day that I was there I arrived just as a class of 10-year olds were finishing off a fairly chaotic and laughter-filled game of 'Simon says' (Simón dice in Spanish) and then watched as the teacher proceeded to relate the game to real life. 

Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

A New Generation of Slum Children

As a Network Consultant for Viva India, one of the best parts of my job is visiting the networks Viva works with and seeing what all the projects are doing. Recently I was on a whirlwind tour of India, travelling from Bangalore in the south to Vijayawada in the southeast, and then all the way up to Dehradun in the Himalayas, and finally back to Delhi where I work. It helped me to remember what a huge, diverse and beautiful country India is … but also how much work there is to be done.

I’d like to share some good news from Dehradun. This is one of India’s oldest cities and is home to half a million people today. It’s snuggled between the feet of the Himalayas and the vast plains of northern India, surrounded by the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Imagine coming from the hot Indian plains and arriving in a place surrounded by forests, mountains and cool rivers! Or, if you like wildlife, you could look around for tigers, snow leopards, cheetahs, or Himalayan bears.

You voted for it: Raising the Status of India's Girls

It's official... educating Indian women is the best way to release them from the dangers and discrimination that accompany their low status.  At least, that's the popular choice of our readers:

93% voted for educating women,

7% thought creating quotas in the workplace would raise their status,

And none of our clever readers thought banning the dowry would do much at all.

You're right.  The dowry - a bride price, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his parents, often extracted through blackmail just before the wedding - has been banned in India for years.  But it's still a widespread practice, entrenching the societal belief that girls are just burdens to be born (or killed before birth).  Read our blog on the topic for more information.  The problem is so bad that more than 5000 women are killed by their husbands or in-laws every year, because the bride's family can no longer afford to pay them off.

Growing Girls in India

Growing up in India can be hard, especially if you’re part of a large family. But in my experience, it’s nearly impossible for girls growing up in India to become the women they want to be. I was born and raised in Andhra Pradesh, a state on the south eastern coast of India. My family was Catholic – in a state where 90% of the people are Hindu and 8% are Muslim! But the culture of mistreating girls pervades everywhere in India, even into Catholic homes.

I know that if I hadn’t fought hard for my education, I would have ended up married off right after secondary school, living in a village in Andhra Pradesh with a husband I didn’t love. This is real life for the vast majority of Indian women. In fact, in India today nearly half of the women who are now between 20 and 24 years old were married before they turned 18. That’s our modern generation!

Veggie Magic ... or Hydroponics?

Whether or not you believe in climate change, you can’t deny that the environment around some of the world’s poorest cities is being significantly hurt by human activity. This is the case in San Jose, capital city of Costa Rica, where high-yield agriculture in the countryside is resulting in dirty rivers, and rapid city growth is causing deforestation and soil erosion. For a child living in the slums of San Jose, this translates to an unstable home and little access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Fact: The World Bank estimates that by 2013, two-thirds of Latin America’s poor will be living in cities. That's a lot of crowds.

Another fact: 20 of Latin America’s largest cities are built on steep hills that are prone to landslides and flooding during the rainy season. One of these is San Jose.

Kids and the World Cup

Blow your vuvuzela, get flag socks on your wing mirrors, make your way to a fan zone…the World Cup is about to arrive in Africa!

Around South Africa, the atmosphere is reaching fever pitch. Arriving in Johannesburg airport, the first thing I saw was a giant football floating in the air to let everyone know that this was a host city. Fans in all colours were queuing at immigration, the most memorable being a Mexican in his green shirt, big hat, comedy sunglasses and a replica trophy!

So who will win the World Cup? After my next flight to Cape Town, I was whisked to a church in a township that was participating in Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer. I asked the children of the township the same question, and was deafened by the shout of “South Africa!!”

Ready, Set, PRAY!

As you may have heard, this weekend is our World Weekend of Prayer for children at risk. Around the world millions of people – the majority of them children! – will be involved in prayer events in churches, hospitals, orphanages, city streets and around breakfast tables.

But you don’t need to hold a special event to pray - if you’ve got a minute you could even just spend 60 seconds devoting prayer to children at risk. If the same numbers as last year are involved, then that would mean more than two million people taking a minute to pray – which amounts to almost 4 years’ worth of prayer for children over one weekend! Very exciting. So let’s look at what we can pray about...

Protagonismo Infantil - Child Advocates

Have you heard? Children are standing up for themselves in Bolivia and getting the word out about child rights! Through our city-wide networks of local projects and churches in Bolivia, Viva is bringing up child leaders who are making a lot of noise about their rights in their own neighbourhoods and communities.

In Bolivia, education and child health are being improved in the interest of national development. But the root problem isn’t being addressed, and Bolivia still has a culture of child neglect. UNICEF says children in Bolivia are often thought of as property, which explains the astronomical level of abuse in schools.

The easy thing to do would be to tell Bolivian adults to respect children, and then hope for the best. But that solution would hardly last generations. Instead, Viva is teaching the children themselves how to bring about change. Through our networks we’re reaching children at more than 130 local projects and 41 local churches, all over the country. This is why working together is so great – we can reach so many more children than just one project working alone.

MDG's Part 2: Universal Primary Education

It’s easy to see why eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is a good development goal. Obviously millions of children should not be constantly hungry. But why is universal primary education an achievement the world should aim for?

Education is key if you want to do more than simply interrupt the poverty cycle – and we want to smash right through it for good. People who have been educated in some way are simply more likely to find a better job, no matter where they are. They generally have a wider variety of skills and are likely to receive more opportunities, and ultimately better education often means better rates of pay.

Little Shoes on Brothel Doorsteps

Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.

Close to 100,000 girls are right now enslaved in Cambodia by sex tourism, pornography, forced child marriages and prostitution. The number of these girls who have been sold into the sex trade by members of their own families is shockingly high. Imagine the impact that would have on a little girl’s soul. Not only is her innocence taken from her, but she feels she can’t trust her own family. A typical response is to turn to drugs and forget the pain. Diseases like AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections are common. If she somehow escapes and goes home, her family and friends turn their backs on her because of her profession.

So what can we do?

Working Kids in Bolivia

Bolivia could definitely stand to be voted Adventure Capital of the World. If you're looking for Amazon jungles or Andean peaks, this is the place for you -- just remember to bring your strongest bug spray. But is it a safe place for kids?

In Bolivia, one third of children are employed as workers in extreme conditions in places such as mines and sugar plantations -- that's 320,000 kids working from dawn till dusk for very little money. Many of them have started school, but are forced to leave to support their families.

While lots of the child workers are in the countryside, thousands of kids in Bolivia's cities are also working. Parents have to sacrifice the education of one child, usually the oldest, so that the rest can eat and go to school. Often these children go around the city streets with little carts, selling whatever they can. And it's not a big step from working on the streets to sleeping and living there full-time.