Community Newsletter | 10 March 2022
Alderney | 8 March, 2022
Dear Friends,
It’s been too long and yes we are OK – we are OK!
Yes, I did have Covid in January and it was a strange month. I thought for a minute I had lost energy for work but no, it was only Covid. I have had the two vaccinations AND the booster and still was in bed with it for five days – so if you haven’t had your vaccinations people – please get them. Would I even be here now if I had got Covid last year while unvaccinated?
This topic brings me to the wonderful news that our…
Immunisation Poster is now published!
I have been waiting for this to be done before contacting our friends. Do download it and let us know what you think. As with all our posters it involved very many experts form around the world and will be used in Kenyan schools next month.
Click above to download and share the link with any friends who you think might use it.
https://www.childrenforhealth.org/ImmunisationPoster
New Website Theme Launch
This week also sees the launch of our new website which is SO much slicker on the mobile.
85% of our views are by people using mobile devices so we had to revise and upgrade the site. We worked with a great team in India and although we had planned a January launch – for all sorts of reasons (and mostly my health) things were delayed. But it is live from TODAY! Do check it out and give us your feedback. It been a huge amount of work, but we are so happy with the result and a big shout out to Amy who handles our website and so much more for all the work she has put in and for her nagging me to do my bit too.
Our new theme on a mobile:
Our new theme on a desktop computer:
New Storybook
We are in the very final stages of our book on Bullying and Resilience called, Our True Colours. It’s been co-created with children and educators in Guam and set on a pacific island. A link to this next month!
Diabetes Poster
You may remember in our last newsletter that we published a Poster on Diabetes. 1000 copies of the poster have just been printed and are about to be distributed to schools in Guam. Here is the link again:
https://www.childrenforhealth.org/DiabetesPoster
The reason I mention it again today is that the brilliant folks in Guam have raised more funding for a storybook and teachers’ resource book on Diabetes. We are currently figuring out more about Diabetes in Guam from key people there and this includes finding out what children themselves know and feel about the topic so that they can help to start addressing some of the root causes.
We’ve helped to run a workshop there and, as usual, the children are so concerned, compassionate and caring and full of creative ideas on things that can be done. We are now designing workshops and will be training and supporting the teachers as we identify some good stories, activities and strategies to prevent and reduce the effects of type 2 diabetes. All these ideas will fuel the development of the new book.
Two workshops on HIV and AIDS in Eswatini…
…have gone ahead in recent weeks and even the very experienced headteacher has been surprised and delighted by what the children know and what they are saying they want to do to help inform people, to support those who are HIV positive and to reduce the stigma of HIV and AIDS. We have also uncovered one or two myths about HIV and AIDS which need addressing.
With their help we are in the final stages of developing our HIV poster and we will be using their ideas to develop the new storybook.
We have had very strong review panels for all three of our recently developed posters (Immunisation, HIV & AIDS and Diabetes).
SuperBetter Children in Zambia
We are nearing completion on this well-being and health project. The children have learned sets of Social and Emotional Learning tools and now they are using these and the Super Better framework (see blog posts below for a fuller explanation!) and are now tackling two physical health projects (malaria and nutrition) and a mental health project. Malaria is the first topic as a sister of one of our club members died from Malaria in November 2021.
PCAANS in Changara, Mozambique
PCAANS is an acronym for the ‘Participation of Children in Learning and Action for Nutrition and Health’ – in Portuguese!
It’s a programme in Mozambique that I’ve been involved with since 2011. Just before the pandemic we got the thumbs up from the Ministry of Education – they wanted it scaled in the country! But, the badly timed pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works and we seem to be dealing with new issues. So, we are developing a PCAANS Toolkit to bring to gather all the best ideas from the programme and we will translate these into Portuguese.
The Toolkit then will be made available to those people and schools with whom we have been most closely associated in Mozambique over the years and serve as a showpiece for organisations wanting to understand what we have already achieved there.
A generous donor has enabled this really important process and allowed us to keep going and build upon the work that has been so well received in the country.
More… more… more…
There is a lot more going on but that’s probably enough to convince you – our dear community – that we are alive and well.
Donations continue to come in from various Trusts and Foundations across the country and this enables us to keep going and producing useful work.
We have lots of plans which we are reasonably optimistic will come through for us in the next six months. I will keep you posted and intend to publish a monthly newsletter.
Best wishes to you all,
Clare x
P.S. Still on the island and sometimes swimming with seals. Yes this photo is of me!
