WHAT A MONTH!

So delighted to let you all know that we are now…

…the AWARD WINNING Children for Health!

On September 20th, 2018 we won a Third Sector Award in the category: Small Charity, Big Achiever! Read more about it here and to watch a short video on why we won this award.

It did not come with funding, but we are already finding a heightened interest (and admiration) for what we do. In October we are meeting MCMnet, a digital marketing agency who sponsored the award and loves our work. Someone at the awards ceremony asked, “How small is small, Clare?” so I asked a friend to come and take a picture of our Global HQ. Here it is!

Not only that, but Clare Hanbury was profiled in The Homertonian Annual Review, the magazine of the University of Cambridge College, Homerton, where Clare trained as a teacher. Download and read it now!

Our Messages in 14 Languages

Our work with Translators without Borders is reaching the final stages, we have our 100 health messages for children to learn and share plus ideas for activities translated into 14 languages so far. We are also re-purposing these files and creating downloadable PDFs to create a booklet for each language. We started with Tamil and it is available as the newest resource from our website. To read more about this, click here.

Intestinal Worms | Topic of the Month 

September is the month when we focus on Intestinal Worms and what children can do to protect themselves and their community from them. Learn how worms spread, what happens when people have worms and how to treat them.

Outstanding Partner 2018

As an education charity, September feels like the ‘start’ of the year as this is when the new academic year begins in the UK! So we choose September to identify and award our Outstanding Partner Award and this we do in memory of Professor Hugh Hawes and Professor David Morley – without whom there would be no ‘Children for Health’. This year, we awarded the prize to John Pettigrew who has been helping us all year on organisational development, fundraising strategy and lately creating the web files for each of our 18 languages! Read more about John here.

Monitoring Downloads

In September our free resources (posters, story books and booklets) were downloaded 1,089 times and the data on our reach tells us that our materials have now been downloaded 5,195 times and in 102 countries. In addition to this, our story books are being downloaded from the World Reader platform. We are delighted and excited to know that our resources are helping children and their educators across the globe.

Download Free Resources on our website now!

Meeting New Friends Face-to-Face

It’s always lovely to meet the colleagues who have been helping us from far flung parts face-to-face. This month we were very pleased to meet Dr Shafiul from Bangladesh who helped us a great deal with the development of our Nutrition poster. Shafiul has great plans to use our content and activities in his work training health workers and young leaders.

Other Things On the Blog

• This month we have been very proud to welcome a guest blogger Sarah Huxley, she has been a close associate (and fan) for many years. Sarah and Clare wanted to respond to a World Health Organisation ‘framework’ on nurture in the early years which we didn’t think gave enough weight to the extraordinary part that young adolescents (and indeed younger children) play in caring for babies and toddlers.
• We had an introduction to a donor from a friend and have applied to them to do our project using Memory Palaces to help children memorise the 100 health messages. This is a fabulous project and we are longing to do it. We will know NEXT MONTH if we have secured the funding, fingers crossed!
• We love the video resources from AVERT on sex and relationship education and we highlighted them on this blog post.
• What with the award nomination, we have been bragging a bit about our impact and our recognition and you can read more about this here.
• We loved the article we read on the Hifa forum this month focussing on reproductive and family planning services and it’s WHO-based author was please to let us re-purpose it for our blog. You can read Nandita’s rich and detailed post here. It is a must read for anyone on the hunt for further reading and resources on this topic. Nandita is also encouraging CfH to join the ‘Implementing Best Practices’ network which we will take up next month.

Funding Concerns

Perhaps more than any month since our beginning we feel that we are on the right track. Our work is being recognised by peers, our downloads are increasing daily, we are creating new resources and a new important partnership has begun. We feel very clear on the programme of activities we would LIKE to do 2019 and this is outlined on our fundraising pages.

BUT… dearest friends, funding is still not flowing and we spend more time than we want to – looking! Many of you do a LOT for us and we are particularly grateful to those who give regularly as your donations are a monthly pat on the back and really motivate us. So if you know any Charitable Trusts, Foundations or indeed any individual who you think would like to support this work then please introduce us and/or send them our website or fundraising pages.

However, I will not finish this months newsletter on that downbeat note as this month there is so much to CELEBRATE! Wherever you are reading this, raise one hand or two and give us a cheer! HURRAY!

Thank you and best wishes,