It’s been an amazing year.
So far in 2016, we have:
- Completed an evaluation of the work that children are doing in Mozambique in 15 schools. Twelve of these are in a rural area and three in an urban area. There are around 14,000 children touched by the project in these schools. In the PCAAN Case Study we found that children are influencing their family by improving the staple diet, their handwashing practices and their mothers breastfeeding practices. There is a lot more going on but these summarise the three ‘results’ that there is most evidence for. We are delighted. Find out more about the PCAAN programme here or please contact us at clare@childrenforhealth.org for a copy of the case study.
- Completed a Rapid Sift of the current evidence available supporting the ideas of children participation in health. Again, please contact us on clare@childrenforhealth.org for a copy of the rapid sift. We are asking for a small contribution towards the costs of this initiative and/or information about your programme and interest in the topic.
Completed English and Portuguese versions of four storybooks: Everyone Counts, The Rainbow Garden, Why Thomas was Good At Football and The Puzzle – for children on hygiene and nutrition. These are linked to our PCAAN programme in Mozambique. These will be available in a mobile friendly format and as downloadable PDF from January 2017.
- Completed an English and Sesotho version of, The Special Glasses, a storybook on diarrhoea and sickness developed with children in Lesotho. Available in a mobile friendly format and as downloadable PDFs from January 2017.
- Completed a poster for our Safe Strong and Smiling initiative to support people working with children in the post Ebola phase in English-speaking West Africa. Our Safe Strong and Smiling Poster and storybook, A Stone is a Strange Thing plus links to our mobi-site are already distributed from our own website, on the Orb hub and a hub of child friendly materials being curated by Save the Children. The poster will be available as a downloadable PDF from January 2017.
- Completed our 100 Messages and Poster. The messages are available on the poster and in 10 separate topic booklets. These are available as a downloadable PDFs from January 2017.
- Completed a poster on how the PCAAN Nutrition Programme works with the team in Mozambique. This is available as a downloadable PDF from January 2017.
- Completed our website. This is going through some fine turning and will be launched in January 2107. This has been a huge task. We will have our materials in an online shop for people to buy or swap with information about how they plan to use the materials they can get for free and information on how the used the materials when we follow up later.
- Developed, tested and completed our, Rainbow Flower Training Methodology. Available as a downloadable PDF from January 2017. This illustration is just one side.
- Created two topic posters on Malaria and Worms that are being field tested with expert groups prior to completion. Available as downloadable PDFs from January 2017.
- Created the Children for Health Vision poster that is being field trialled prior to completion. Available as a downloadable PDF from January 2017.
- Developed a CfH Basic Trainers Guide in English linked to the programme in Mozambique. Available in a mobile friendly format and as a downloadable PDF from January 2017.
- Developed a suite of materials to support the Save the Children Signature Programmes for Diarrhoea Prevention in Pakistan, Nigeria and India. These include a Master Trainers Guide, A Teaching Guide and an Activities for Children Guide. By the end of of 2016 these will exist in three different versions; each adapted for each of the different contexts.
- Conducted two week-long Teacher Training workshops for 48 teachers in Lagos, Nigeria linked to the Save the Children Signature Programme.
- Conducted a week-long Master Training workshop for 29 trainers in Kolkata, India linked to the Save the Children Signature Programme.
- Developed a partnership with the Hanging Libraries project, a project first devised by our friend and mentor, Hugh Hawes. Through the HL network we will be distributing Hugh’s children’s books on health and make available our storybooks too. Click on this link to lean more about the project.
- Worked with Cambridge University’s, Judge Business School to review and develop our strategic direction. Insights from this gruelling process helped feed the development of our new website.
- Been featured in the ARM Corporate Responsibility Report, page 31.
- Developed a partnership with Literacy Bridge to test our content with children on their Talking Book.
- Developed a partnership with former colleagues in Kenya to establish a Children for Health Model School in a rural area where we will fully test and document our many methods including innovative memory techniques to help children learn and share the 100 messages.
And – oh joy of joys – on 5th November, Bonfire Night; our Portuguese Translator and Editor – Joanna gave birth safely to baby Clara!
Between now and the end of the year we will be providing more detailed news on each of these achievements.
We have NOT been good at keeping in touch with our community this year. This has largely been down to the transition to a new website that seems to be ‘imminent’ for most of the year! Please forgive us. We will be back, much more in touch and active on social media too as soon as our new website is launched. We are recruiting to help us with this endeavour.
Like all charities we also have the day-to-day administration of the charity to attend to – the bookkeeping – the accounting – the formal reporting – the Trustees meetings and, of course, fund-raising. For more details of our work, our achievement and our financial position in 2015, please contact us for our Annual Report.
There are many other activities that we have conducted this year that serve one or more of our key objectives:
- To develop ways to engage children and their educators and help them to understand the 100 health messages for children to learn and share,
- To develop partnerships with programmes who wish to use our content, activities and training methods;
- To develop academic links and promote the importance of research linked to our initiatives.
Our Overall Vision
What we hope and expect is that through the distribution of Children for Health’s content and activities – many thousands of children all over the world are empowered to lead healthier lives and prevent disease and feel able to spread life saving knowledge and skills to their sibling’s friends and family.
The BIG PLAN for 2017
The BIG PLAN…. for next year is to set up the Children for Health Digital Training School so that anyone anywhere can access training in our content and methods to implement and evaluate programmes focusing on child participation in health.
APPEAL!
Our achievements this year have been described by our fans as “breathtaking” and our effort “herculean” but it’s hard to raise funding for this work and seems to be getting harder – especially for smaller charities. We know that what we do and the way we work is super efficient. We want to stay small. Every penny we get counts.
If you know ANYONE who would like to support our efforts, PLEASE share this post with them and lets get a conversation started.
Please help us to do more.