I have been looking over the Save the Children website. Here is the link- http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6115947/k.8D6E/Official_Site.htm
This website is inspiring.
Save the Children was first started in England and now there is also a
Save the Children USA. From reading the different
articles on the website I was able to learn there are three main goals of the
organization. Child protection,
Education and Child Development, and Health and Nutrition (Save the Children,
2011) encompass the biggest objectives. With
these aims in mind Save the Children has helped children and families in “120
countries on 6 continents”! They have
also estimated helping “64 million children” (Save the Children, 2011)
I wanted to point out something that touched me; I read on
the site that they have “Dewormed children in 16 countries in 2010, including
more than one million children in Ethiopia alone” (Save the Children,
2011) My mother used to tell me about
her having worms when she was child, but I figured something like that didn’t
occur anymore- kind of like Smallpox. I
was very surprised to learn this news and to think of how naïve I am to
diseases and issues in other countries.
It was a real shock and heart breaker but also a humble reminder of the
place I call home and how fortunate I am.
Another shocking (to me) issue on the website that I saw
brought up repeatedly was the simple issue of germs. There were so many instances in which this
organization was able to help large communities by simply teaching the children
to wash their hands, thereby the children went home and taught their families
the knowledge they had learned about germs.
Other things included boiling water, or making dehydration
medicines. In Bangladesh, “Save the
Children helped organize nearly 53,000 school children in Bangladesh to wash
hands together on Global Handwashing Day – making the Guinness Book of Records
for the second year running” (Save the Children, 2011) Amazing the simple things we take for
granted.
Wow! There are so many things we take for granted! Reading about de-worming and very basic sanitation issues really puts things into perspective.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder sometimes that with so many very basic necessities going unmet, how we can get so worked up about whether the four-year-olds in our classroom can complete an ABAB pattern!
One of the things that I appreciate about Save the Children is the broad range of services they provide--from disaster preparedness to sustainable practices (handwashing) in developing countries to education.
I look forward to researching and learning more about this organization. Thanks for sharing.
~Shawn
Reading your blog post almost brought tears to my eyes. Imagining a world where I did not know to wash my hands and had to boil my water is unreal. I wash my hands constantly without even thinking about other parts of the world that can't or don't know that it is important. I also have found myself wasting water at times. Sometimes if there is just a little bit left in a plastic bottle I will dump it down the drain instead of drinking it. The information you posted about Save the Children and their mission puts into perspective things I need to change about the things I use and sometimes waste.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this information.
Caitlyn