Archive for the ‘World Vision’ Category

World Vision UK is asking for your help in demanding U.N leaders ‘Finish the Job’. As part of their global ‘Child Health Now’ campaign, the World Vision childrens charity are calling on world leaders to stand by their stance to halve global poverty by 2015 and fulfil their promises towards achieving their Millennium Development Goals. These eight plans of action were set in place a decade ago, yet many of these goals are way off track, and unless drastic action is taken, will not be achieved.

With the U.N. review in September just around the corner, now is the time for Deputy PM Nick Clegg to stand up and make a stand for the voices of the people of Britain. Now is the time to takes decisive action and ‘Finish the Job’, helping save the lives of up to 6 million children each year.

> > Click here to email your local MP and ‘Finish the Job’

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

Fame Academy and Pop Idol vocal coach to the stars Carrie Grant recently visiting a new community development project in India with World Vision UK. Ms. Grant will be visiting the Vaishali project in the North Eastern state of Bihar, where Carrie will see how the childrens charity are working to help improve the health of the locals community who live in this impoverished area.

Whilst in India, Carrie will be talking to a local women’s self help group, who have created the opportunity to start small businesses in the area to provide for their children. Carrie will also be watching a local street theatre group who highlight the important health message that need to be conveyed to the locals. Many children in the area are facing severe health problems, with malnutrition causing at least one third of child deaths in the area. Ms. Grant will also be meeting with the staff and patients at the only community health centre in the area, which has to serve an unbelievable 78,000 people!

Carrie said -

I’m very excited to be visiting Vaishali. It’s a fairly new project for World Vision, so it’ll be interesting to see how things are taking off. I know World Vision grounds its work in grassroots cooperation and I’m a great believer in community – it’ll be good to meet the people and learn how the local experts are moving forward day to day.

Carrie, who is best known for her work on talent shows such as Fame Academy and Pop Idol, will be presenting a new World Vision event called ‘Girls Night Out’. These events, which start in the Autumn, are a new initiative to entertain whilst sharing stories about World Vision’s partnerships with women who live in developing countries.

The first Girls Night Out will take place at St Mary’s Church in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, on Friday 10th September 2010, with further dates around the country to follow.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

The World Vision charity sent their own light hearted message at Heathrow Airport to the world leaders who will be travelling to the G8 Summit in Canada. Supporters dressed as Canadian Mounties with world leaders faces printed onto masks in a bid to highlight the desperate need to help tackle the global child health crisis.

The G8 promised in their ‘Millennium Development Goals’ a decade ago to halve global poverty by 2015, yet despite progress, nearly 9 million children under the age of 5 die every year. Many of these deaths are caused by easily preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. The G8 needs to act now to fulfil their promises, and with only 5 years remaining, the clock is ticking.

The World Vision children’s charity will be pushing their message of change at the G8 meeting in Muskoka, Canada. Action, not words, needs to be taken today to give the children of tomorrow the opportunity at a better life. World leaders need to fulfil their promises of 2000 that global poverty would be halved. At the current rate of change, this promise looks a long way off and needs to addressed before it’s too late.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

The World Vision charity is fully behind the ’1GOAL: Education for All’ campaign, which is calling on all the world leaders to help provide education to all 72 million children worldwide by 2015, no matter what country they live in. 1GOAL is using the power of football to ensure that every child has the right to receive an education especially now with 2010 FIFA World Cup being held in Africa.

World leaders made an eight point Millennium Development Goal pledge in 2000 to help all children across the globe, which included the end of poverty through education by 2015. Thanks to the abolition of school fees in many countries, an extra 33 million children are now going to school. Yet the goal to ensure that all children complete primary schooling by this date is looking a long way off without increased action.

The World Vision childrens charity is supporting the campaign with the Global Campaign for Education. This group is features a coalition of teachers’ unions and development agencies around the world who have united to try and achieve their goal for universal education for all. Footballers, such as Alan Shearer, along with fans and FIFA are fully behind the  1GOAL campaign, alongside many other education groups, charities and campaigners.

World Vision’s Senior Child Rights Policy Advisor, Philippa Lei, said -

Education is key to transforming lives. Not only does it open up economic opportunity and contribute to poverty reduction, it literally does save lives. Children of mothers who receive an education are twice as likely to live beyond age five.

> > Click here to join 1GOAL

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

Friday 21st May 2010 was National Letter Writing Day, and according to a survey by World Vision UK, exchanging handwritten letters can have a really positive impact on child development. In today’s technological age, children spend more time on computers and text messages than they do actually writing out letters, but this is a great way for adults in the UK to connect with the children they sponsor all over the world to help in their learning process. In fact, as many as one in five UK children surveyed had never received a handwritten letter!

Results from the World Vision UK survey revealed in the last 12 months -

• 26% of children have not written a letter
• 43% of children have not received one
• 5% of children received letters from pen pals abroad.
• 90% of those that received a handwritten letter felt excitement and happy

During the survey, 49% of children had either written or received an email in the last week, so it’s not as if the downturn is anything to do with a lack of communication. The ease with which information is now passed around the globe has taken over from the joy a written letter can give to the recipient, something World Vision are championing through their Sponsor a Child programme.

Child education expert, Sue Palmer, said -

If children do not write or receive letters they miss out on key developmental benefits. Handwritten letters are much more personal than electronic communication. By going to the trouble of physically committing words to paper, the writer shows their investment of time and effort in a relationship. That’s why we tend to hang on to personal letters as keep-sakes. The effort of writing is a very real one for a child. Painstakingly manoeuvring the pencil across the page, thinking of the best words to convey a message, struggling with spelling and punctuation. It is, however, an effort worth making, because it’s only through practice that we become truly literate – and literacy is the hallmark of human civilisation. If we care about real relationships, we should invest in real communication, not just the quick fix of a greetings card, text or email. What’s more, if we care about civilised human thought, we should encourage our children to invest time and energy in sitting down to write.

World Vision commissioned this survey to help show the power of letter writing. Hand written letters are a key feature of their Child Sponsorship programme, which helps to connect families in the UK with children in the developing world.

Associate Director at World Vision, Kate Nicholas, said -

We know that literacy is one of the main ways to fight poverty in the developing world, but it’s also a key concern for the parents and teachers, up and down the UK, who sponsor with World Vision. Many of them see Child Sponsorship as a win-win situation. It allows children to improve their literacy and build a personal relationship through letter-writing, while understanding more about the world and giving children living in poverty the chance to access education themselves.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

World Vision UK child sponsor’s Roger Waluube and Obia Ejikeme, have recently embarked on a huge 5 week drive through Europe and Africa to help raise funds to support the children’s charities tireless work in Uganda. The couple’s epic trip started in London and will finish in the capital of Uganda, Kampala, with plans to raise up to £2500 during the journey.

Roger (who is of Ugandan origin) and Obia are planning on visiting the children they sponsor through World Vision on their way to Uganda, and the couple will be carrying a GPS device so that supporters can follow their journey. Plus there will be constant updates via Twitter and Facebook for the couple to share their experiences on the road whilst making this once in a lifetime trip.

The journey, which will take in Europe, Northern Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya, was inspired by the 2007 BBC programme Long Way Down. This show featured Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travelling 15,000 miles from John O’Groats to Cape Town, and got Obia and Roger thinking…

Obia said -

We both wanted to travel around Africa and get to know more about Africa. Roger said ‘Why don’t we drive there’, so we just decided to do it for charity.

The five week drive should help raise £2,500 for World Vision’s work in East Africa. These funds will help provide much needed resources for many projects, including a community initiative to help improve the educational prospects of children in Rukiga, south-west Uganda.

Roger, who is Ugandan by origin, said -

As well as raising money, we also want to raise awareness of issues such as HIV, particularly how to support children living with HIV, and education. We’re both believers of health and education. I was a teacher once and for me, working with, helping and supporting kids is important.

> > Click here to follow their online London to Kampala blog

> > Click here to follow their journey on Twitter

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

World Vision UK aid workers have finally managed to arrive after 30 hours road travel in China’s quake stricken Qinghai Province. Due to the continued disruptions to air travel because of the Icelandic volcanic ash, the team is now in to assess the damage and provide supplies. More than 1,000 boxes of noodles, hygiene kits and child-friendly kits have been distributed in the town of Jiegu, where over 80% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed. With snowfall due very soon, the World Vision team are also planning to hand out over 2,000 quilts to those left without shelter due to the quake.

As the death toll rises to over 2,000 people following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake, tens of thousands have been left homeless. Hygiene, medical and health needs are currently at a critical stage in the remote Qinghai Province. World Vision is now working alongside the China Charity Federation to help coordinate the on site aid relief.

With temperatures in the area dropping as low as -3 degrees Celsius, blankets and warm clothing are essential to children and their families during this difficult time. 5,000 tents, 50,000 quilts and 50,000 winter jackets are to be sent to the devastated area by the China Ministry of Civil Affairs to help the survivors. Though the area population is just 70,000 people, the fact the quake hit very early in the morning accounts for the large number of casualties.

World Vision’s humanitarian emergency director, Victor Kan, said -

There has been a series of aftershocks and this can be very frightening for children. It is important that they seek safety in earthquake-proof buildings or open areas, away from hazardous buildings.

World Vision aid programme has reached over 2.1 million people since they started working in China in 1982. Since the 2008 Sichuan quake, World Vision has been at the forefront in providing education about safety disaster alongside helping communities rebuild homes, schools and livelihoods.

Without your donations, none of this outstanding work would be possible.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

120 children from the Stagecoach schools in Witney and Bourton on the Water surprised the crowds at Legoland Windsor last week, when they performed an impromptu flash mob performance to help promote the World Vision UK Child Health Now campaign. The children, aged between 4 and 18 years old, performed ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ and ‘Tomorrow’ in the middle of Legoland to the unsuspecting public, and you can see their amazing performance on the video below.

World Vision UK’s Head of Engagement, Martin Thomas said:

The event was an amazing experience; something that will linger in [the young people's] memories for a long time to come. It was thrilling to see the culmination of more than seven months of planning and creative engagement with young people, their families, Stagecoach and Legoland. Our hope is that the flash mob video and campaign call will become something that makes ripples throughout the UK and across the world; inspiring people to take action for the world’s most vulnerable children.

The campaign is to help draw attention to the 8.8 million children under five who die each year from preventable diseases. With simple vaccinations, these deaths can but stopped. Diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria should not be fatal disease. The children that took part will be promoting the Child Health Now campaign in assemblies and classroom talks to help raise awareness on this vital subject.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

World Vision UK know how important it is to be in contact with your sponsored child, and of course for them to be in contact with you. The ability to share each others lives and to see what difference your donations are making is one of the most moving parts of child sponsorship, and now World Vision have made it even easier to stay in touch.

All you now need to do is add your sponsored child’s ID, type your message and World Vision will do the rest. Your personal message will be sent electronically to the national office where your child lives, where it will then be printed and translated before being delivered. All sponsored children love to hear from their sponsor, and after they can reply via a conventional letter. It’s a great way to stay in touch and also to find out the difference your donations are making to a child who needs your help the most.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK

World Vision UK has launched a new partnership initiative with the Daily Telegraph newspaper to support their project in the Tegloma region of Sierre Leone, to appeal to their readers to be part of a new movement of humanitarian change. The national 7 month partnership will feature editorial pieces from Telegraph journalists, plus updates, competitions, and loads of other interesting ways to demonstrate how their readership can help the communities of Sierra Leone who are in desperate need of aid.

As the population of Sierra Leone begins to recover from the brutal decade long civil war, almost 75% of their population are trying to live on less than $2 a day. With almost half of the population also chronically undernourished, World Vision are looking for support from the UK to help their fight to rebuild the lives of the people of Sierre Leone.

World Vision and The Daily Telegraph are calling on the UK public to give the children of Sierra Leone clean water, a regular supply of food and the correct medicine to help combat the diseases that take so many lives that could be saved through simple injections. With the right public support, World Vision can continue their tireless efforts in Sierre Leone and help more and more children see a brighter future.

Help World Vision by sponsoring a child

The World Vision Sponsor a Child programme is a great way to give a needy child a real chance of escaping poverty. As part of a long-term program, your continued support enables World Vision to use your donations to build sustainable communities in partnership with the people who live there.

You can provide a child with a better future for just 60p a day – giving them a real chance of escaping poverty. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes directly, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

> > Click here to sponsor a child with World Vision UK