International Contacts-Part 1

I took the alternative route in creating a contact in another country.  I chose to listen to a podcast on the World Forum Foundation Radio website.  Episode 3 by Delfena Mitchell was about a child living in Belize at Liberty Home, a residence for children who have been abused. Belize is a country in Central America that has the #1 incidence of child abuse in the Caribbean.  Belize has a population of 300,000 with nearly 50% under the age of 18.  Thirty nine percent of children live below the poverty line (www.libertyfoundation.org.uk).  Delfena talks about Joe, a young 9 year old who came to Liberty Home 9 months prior to her podcast with his 6 brothers and sisters.  He had not spoken in over a year.  He had been physically abused and had observed his sister being abused.  They tried home schooling him at Liberty Home and then sending him to the town school but he was kicked out of the school the first week.  After being at Liberty Home for 9 months he finally spoke to Delfena while they were on a horseback ride. He told her his grandmother had beat him with a stick and when he was hungry he would hide under his bed to eat so that the other children and adults would not take the food from him.  After Joe began to talk they created a schedule for him that consisted of 2 hours of education and the rest of his day outside playing in the gardens.  With the combination of going back to school and medication in a matter of weeks they saw huge changes in Joe (http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php).  After listening to this podcast I chose to research Liberty Home. 

Liberty Home's website is www.libertyfoundation.org.uk.  Liberty Home serves 40 children at a time that have been abandoned and/or physically or sexually abused.  Many of the children have disabilities, special needs or are HIV positive.  Their mission is to build trust with the children that come to live with them.  They set up primary care givers for each child so they have one person they can form a relationship with.  Liberty Home does not just provide food and shelter but also respects, nurtures and treats children as individuals.  They strive to ensure successful placements in foster and adoptive homes.

To learn even more about children and poverty I researched the Childhood Poverty website at www.childhoodpoverty.org.  After reading about a couple of countries I learned that in 2001, India had 1.03 billion citizens and 260.2 million of them were living in poverty in 1999-2000.  Poverty can happen in any country, in cities as well as rural areas.  It will take years to wipe out poverty in any country because there are many factors that need to be changed to decrease and eliminate poverty.  When poverty effects children it has life long effects on their brain development and growth.  In some countries, such as India, gender biases also play a role in poverty.  Girls are kept out of school and given inferior health services.  To completely eliminate poverty gender biases must be changed, children must be given better health care as well as nutrition, education must be provided for all children so they can grow up to find jobs that will sustain them and their family.  Governments must step in to create better schools, better jobs and better lives for the people of their countries.  Eliminating poverty for any country will not happen quickly, but over time it can happen.

References

Liberty Home http://www.libertyfoundation.org.uk/projects_libertycareprogram.html

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/

World Forum Foundation. http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/about.php

World Forum Foundation Radio. http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php