It’s already March so our first newsletter of the year comes very late! We do aim to publish one newsletter every month, but we have been slow off the blocks this year.

We have a lot to report to our community!

Money!
Firstly, thanks to a lot of hard work (especially from our Trustees) we managed to raise £40K at the tail end of last year. Many of those who helped us are also in this community and if you are a donor: thank you, thank you, thank you.

Those who would like to donate – it’s never too late!

Results
Our partnership model means that our reach is spectacular given our size. Recent results include:

1. Our work with Save the Children in 60 schools in India (on Diarrhoea Prevention and Control) is being rolled out to 400 more schools.
2. Our work in 40 schools in Lagos (on Diarrhoea Prevention and Control)) has been endorsed by Lagos State Government officials. We are waiting to understand how the programme is to reach the many hundreds of other primary schools in the State. Read more about this here.
3. A bit “hush hush” – but coming soon is a programme alongside a partner who provides high quality content to families throughout India. We are working with Translators without Borders on our 100 messages and ideas for activities on What Children Can Do. Our content is being translated into all the Indian languages.
4. Our work in Mozambique has found a new partner in the The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and our PCAAN programme (for 10-14 year olds) is being dovetailed with Vamos Comer, an FAO primary school programme for younger children. These two programmes are being primed to become a national strategy for nutrition education in Mozambique.

On the Blog
We update our website regularly with our latest news, have a read, meanwhile these are some recent highlights:

• Since January we have conducted three mini campaigns around each ‘Topic of the Month’.
  • In January, it was all about the first of our topics Caring for Babies & Young Children
  • In February, we focused on Coughs, Colds and Pneumonia
  • and in March we are focusing on Immunisation.
• We have written about how we strengthen partner programmes – this is in response to the many queries coming in each week.
• We write about training the T-shaped teacher.

The Second 100?
We’re branching out in a new direction for Children for Health – Adolescent Well-Being and Resilience. This covers Mental Health, but that topic is probably a stretch too far outside our expertise, so for now we are beginning work on a second ‘100’ messages for children to learn and share – and this time the focus will be on well-being and resilience.

Please do get in touch if your interested in joining an advisory group as we slowly develop this focus though the year. Read more here.

New Partnerships
This month we are well on our way to establishing a new partnership with a group effectively delivering Eye Health in a number of countries. What we love about them is their academic base (we need to collect evidence) and their focus on a specific behaviour that they want our help to solve. This task will enable us to test our new ABCD framework and set of questions and methods that we think could contribute to the way health education programmes approach ABCD. You can find more information about ABCD on our blog this month.

A Cambridge Story
Our fund-raising focus in 2018 is to find other businesses in Cambridge (UK) who would like to support our work. ARM and Cambridge Assessment are our current major sponsors and we would like to add others. We realise that we have a Cambridge story to tell, read it here.

NCDs
In other developments, we have been approached to help with the development of content and activities for educators on the topics of risky behaviours leading to Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). Tobacco use, an unhealthy diet and the lack of physical activity are seen as the most important risk factors leading to NCDs. Working with children in early adolescents on these risk factors is one crucial strategy – but it has to be done right and with the participation of the adolescents themselves.

Thank you
…for reaching the end of this newsletter! And for your continued support, dedication and enthusiasm. If you’d like to receive future newsletters directly to your in box, subscribe here and join our community! Look us up on social media too.

We will have updates on progressing ABCD and on the hush hush project in India in our next newsletter after the Spring holiday.

Best wishes

Clare Hanbury
Founder and CEO
Children for Health