Tag Archives: education

Shelley Callahan | August 10, 2021En Español

Our affiliated project, the Rainbow ‘Erdata’ Center, or simply the Rainbow Center, operates from a small office in the Bole area of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. The Center’s administrators, including our volunteer coordinator, Wini, work with children from slums in and around the city. Today, we hear from our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, about how sponsorship support has helped kids who attend the Rainbow Center during their school years — and into adulthood.

Today, we hear from our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, about how sponsorship support has helped kids who attend the Rainbow Center during their school years — and into adulthood.

“This small community center is run by the government and provides children from impoverished neighborhoods with resources — including those provided by the Children Incorporated sponsorship program,” explained Luis.

“Support from sponsors ensures that children have funds for tuition at local schools, as well as to purchase books and school supplies. At times, food bags are also distributed, depending on the requested needs of the sponsored children’s parents.”

Without this support, many of the children would turn to the streets and become beggars or day to day workers earning meager wages. Because they are able to stay in school, thanks to their sponsors, many children in our program have graduated and gone into higher education,” said Luis.

An association of graduates

Wini’s assistant, Fatima, goes over paperwork with Luis during a visit to the Rainbow Center in Ethiopia.

“Some of the students that have graduated went on to form a small association of graduates, now that they all have permanent jobs in established companies, thanks to some technical training or university education.”

“There are accountants, graphic designers, engineers, and nurses in the group, among other professions. Although they do not make as much money in these professions as they would in similar jobs in the United States, because of the country’s structure, they do live now much favorably than before and are able to take care of themselves and their families,” said Luis.

Learning the value of giving back

“Furthermore, the support provided to them from their sponsors has also instilled in them the desire to help others.”

“Each member of the graduate groups sets aside a bit of their salary to help elderly members of the community,” said Luis.

“On my last trip to Ethiopia in late 2019, I had a chance to meet some of the group members, and they expressed their thanks for the sponsorship support they received. They stated that without the support, they would not be able to study, graduate, and get a profession. They all look happy and reflected on the years of support with gratitude for the opportunity to change their lives.”

“One of them, an engineer working for an IT company, does also provide IT support to some of the children now participating in our sponsorship program at the Rainbow Center. Others help organize meetings, coordinate the distribution of food and school supplies, and help identify children in the local neighborhoods to enroll in our program. Wini informed me that her work is better and more efficient now, with the help of these graduates.”

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How do I sponsor a child in Ethiopia?

You can sponsor a child in Ethiopia in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in Ethiopia that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | August 1, 2021En Español

Located more than 200 miles outside of Addis Ababa, Kids Hope Ethiopia supports children in our program in the rural town of Kersa.

“Kids Hope is an impressive project — and one in which our sponsorship should be proud to support.”

The Kids Hope Center itself has two locations within Kersa. One site has an agricultural area and a dining hall. The other location has a few sports fields and a salon/classroom, classes, meetings, and trainings.

“Kids Hope supports children who attend the Center’s afterschool and return home each day, while also serving children from further away, who board with local families and then return home on the weekends. The children are enrolled in local public schools, and they are provided with all school supplies, materials, clothes, and food. The Center provides a great opportunity for education, whereas otherwise, there is no option to go to school in the small surrounding villages,” explained our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet.

Gardening for multiple purposes

“A few years ago, Children Incorporated supported Kids Hope’s efforts to start a vegetable garden with their agricultural area. This vegetable garden has been great for educational purposes for the children, while also offering them nutritional food.”

“All the vegetables produced there are used in the Center’s kitchen. The children are provided with meals every day while attending nearby schools, and then after school, when they are at the Center for tutoring and computer training,” said Luis.

“This center is providing crucial resources for children’s development in this remote area — Kids Hope is an impressive project — and one in which our sponsorship should be proud to support.”

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How do I sponsor a child in Ethiopia?

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | July 14, 2021En Español

Our Mosquito Net Fund is one of the most effective ways our sponsors and donors can offer help to keep children healthy and protect them against mosquito-borne diseases. For roughly $10 apiece, we can provide essential mosquito nets to children in our program living in Africa and India.

Each year, we give approximately 1800 mosquito nets to our sponsored children, such as those at our affiliated project, the Materi Girls’ School, in Tharaka, Kenya.

Each year, we give approximately 1800 mosquito nets to our sponsored children, such as those at our affiliated project, the Materi Girls’ School, in Tharaka, Kenya.

A school in high demand

Located 170 miles north of Nairobi, the Materi Girls’ School was created to educate children from the poor, rural agricultural area between Tharaka county and Meru County. Although situated in a remote area, the school draws students from all over the country due to its reputation as a reputable educational establishment.

“The Materi School integrates a demanding curriculum for secondary (high school) students that allows them to qualify to attend almost any university in Kenya, a rare accomplishment,” explained Children Incorporated Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet.

The large school serves girls within a very rural and impoverished part of Kenya.

“The secondary school education that students receive here is very advanced for Kenya. Many of the girls take computer science classes in addition to their general studies. They also participate in theater, music, and speech classes.”

Because the school is located in such a remote part of Kenya, the students all board there, returning home during school holidays.

Protecting the well-being of the whole community

“The girls are provided with nutritious meals every day and housing. A medical dispensary monitors their health and offers advice on treatment of any tropical illness affecting the children, staff, and part of the community,” said Luis.

“Mosquito nets and medication are readily available to attack the diseases, such as malaria, for all children and staff at Materi School — our sponsored children receive mosquito nets as well as school supplies, uniforms, tuition support, and hygiene items thanks to their sponsors.”

“The medical prevention program has been so successful that the Materi School implemented the same plan with the community living within a one-kilometer radius. Then it was expanded to 5 kilometers, thus ensuring a great area surrounding the school was protected against illness,” said Luis.

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How do I sponsor a child in Kenya?

You can sponsor a child in Kenya in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in Kenya that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | July 8, 2021En Español

The following is an interview conducted in June 2021 with the Phil VA which also can be found here.

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Did you ever have to worry about going to school on an empty stomach, without a backpack of supplies or shoes?

Shelley Callahan, Director of Development at Children Incorporated, explains how many children living in poverty in Richmond, in other parts of the U.S. and around the world face these situations every single day and how it affects their well-being and potential for success.

Children Incorporated offers a wide variety of resources to children from basic needs like food and clothing to emergency relief services when their family has faced natural disasters.

We recently had the chance to catch up with Callahan to learn more about Children Incorporated and how it serves our local community.

What is Children Incorporated’s core mission?

It’s to provide children with education, hope and opportunity. Really, the core of what we do is provide children with basic needs, things like school supplies, tuition payments, shoes, clothing and food.

Shelley Callahan is the Director of Development with Children Incorporated.

We’re an international organization, so we’re in 21 countries and eight states in the U.S. We’re also in Richmond and Richmond Public Schools. We work with eight elementary and middle schools here in Richmond.

WHAT problem or issue does Children Incorporated address in our community?

What we’re really addressing when we’re looking at issues children are facing in Richmond, are families where parents are unemployed or underemployed, where their jobs just don’t pay well enough for them to be able to provide well for their kids, where the school system maybe isn’t able to keep up with what children might need like school supplies. In the U.S., we don’t have issues with tuition, but we do have big issues with children being able to afford things like field trips or graduation caps and gowns and anything that is a part of a child’s learning experience that they might be missing out on. Those are some of the gaps that we fill.

What do you think most people don’t realize or understand about these issues?

I don’t think people realize how exhausting it is for children to live in poverty. What a toll it takes on them, only eating one meal a day, and that meal being the one that the public school provides for them. They’re malnourished, and they’re going without proper clothes or bedding, and they sleep on the floor of their homes.

With poverty, people don’t understand the crumbling issue of one thing always leading to another. The poverty that parents face is trickled down to their children and is something that is distracting them from being able to be a parent that’s present. It could be having three jobs, and they’re still in poverty. It could be having a disability. It could be being absent due to drug or alcohol abuse. It could be being absent due to being in jail. It’s all these different factors.

In reality, people in poverty are not available for their children, and it’s not because they don’t love them or care about them. Parents try really hard to care for their children, but sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day to focus on everything that a child needs to be supported.

What kind of work do volunteers do to help Children Incorporated?

The volunteers that we work with on a regular basis are our project coordinators around the world. They’re the ones that run our program on a volunteer basis because they see the benefit of it where they’re making sure that the children are getting those resources that they need, and they have that personal connection with the child to know what they need.

The poverty that parents face is trickled down to their children and is something that is distracting them from being able to be a parent that’s present.

As an organization, we don’t have open volunteer opportunities due to our privacy and protection policies because the kids are in public schools.

We do have volunteers that do some really great things such as knit hats and scarves for kids in the winter that we can then send to our project coordinators or deliver. We have volunteers that made masks to send to kids at some of our programs where COVID-19, especially in the U.S. in the Navajo nations, hit very hard.

We also have volunteers that are willing to be ambassadors for our organization, so there’s volunteers that love to tell more people about what we do and love to make sure that they’re continuously sharing information about us on social media or sharing our posts on social media to bring more people to Children Incorporated’s pages.

If $100,000 fell from the Sky tomorrow, how would you spend it?

The sponsorship program, where we support children on a monthly basis for $35 a month. We would love it for people to be long-term committed to it. That’s how it’s designed so that you would stay with a child for a number of years to support them through school.

I would designate immediately half of the $100,000 to it. A certain number of children would be sponsored for five to eight years, and to say we can guarantee that this number of children with this amount of money will absolutely be receiving basic needs for this number of years. It would be completely life changing for them and their family.

Our U.S. feeding program is a big deal. I would definitely look at supporting that. If you’re talking about keeping it in Richmond, we do a lot of work for kids that our volunteer coordinators find are in need. We fill book bags full of food for children to take them home on the weekends. It’s a huge deal. It’s sometimes the only reason these kids eat at home on the weekends.

Another fund that I really like that is U.S. and Richmond-focused is called our Hope In Action fund. It’s our emergency services fund. We get requests for everything you could ever imagine. If a family in Kentucky, their home floods and they lose everything, we buy them beds and linens for the kids and cleaning materials.

If you’re interested in learning more about Children Incorporated, visit its website or follow it on Facebook and Instagram. You can donate directly here.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | June 13, 2021En Español

* Note: This blog was written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although much has changed regarding our sponsored children’s learning experience in the past months, our On the Road stories remain relevant in regards to our volunteer coordinator’s work and the impact of sponsorship on children in our program thanks to our sponsors. We are pleased to continue to share stories with you about our work.

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Blackey, Kentucky is proud of its distinction as a place where part of the movie, Coal Miner’s Daughter, was filmed. Once a bustling mining town with its own coal company, Blackey was devastated by floods and fires in the late 1920s. Even more tragically, during the Great Depression, the little community’s bank failed, and Blackey never regained its glory years.

“Michele has taken maximum advantage of her space. Every square inch is packed with materials and supplies for children — including those in our sponsorship program.”

Lots of basic needs items for kids

Letcher Elementary School serves children from kindergarten through fifth grade. The school feeds into another Children Incorporated affiliated project, Letcher Middle School, which is attached to one end of the elementary school. Although the schools are on the same campus, they operate separately.

“Our volunteer coordinator and the school’s Family Resource Center Coordinator, Michele, is fortunate to have a large physical resource center, which is not usually the case in schools in Kentucky,” explains Renée Kube, our Director of U.S. Programs.

We are grateful for our sponsors who make it possible for us to support children at Letcher Elementary School.

“Michele has taken maximum advantage of her space. Every square inch is packed with materials and supplies for children — including those in our sponsorship program.”

A community with a big heart

During a visit to the school, Michele told Renée that Letcher Elementary and Middle Schools are fortunate to be located in Blackey, which is a small town with a big heart. The community members are very driven to help each other, and the city administrators offer many public places for residents to learn.

“Blackey has a tiny public library in town and a community center that is open to adults and children. The community center offers workshops in practical things like sewing and also activities like painting and handicrafts,” said Renée.

“It is wonderful that the community has a gathering place where people can come together to have fun and support one another emotionally and physically.”

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How do I sponsor a child in Kentucky?

You can sponsor a child in Kentucky in one of two ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members or email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | June 4, 2021En Español

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Hart Middle School in Washington, D.C. is located in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Ward 8. The school serves 357 students in grades sixth through eighth. Its student demographics are 98% black, 1% Hispanic/Latino, and 1% other. Seventy-four percent of the children come from within the district boundary. Twenty-one percent receive special education services — and 100% of students are considered economically disadvantaged.

“We are incredibly proud to be working with Hart Middle School to support their great efforts to lift children up both educationally and academically.”

“Our Volunteer Coordinator at Hart Middle is named Ashley. She has been with the school for several years and has built a wonderful rapport with her students and families. It is apparent she is a devoted advocate for them,” explained Renée Kube, our Director of U.S. Programs.

“While meeting with Ashley in her office, she gave me a refresher about the school. She talked about a reading intervention program for students whose reading comprehension is below grade level. Groups of students come in regularly for lunchtime mentoring.”

“The school believes in the whole child and supports athletics and several arts and cultural clubs, as well as academics,” said Renée.

A new and inventive program

Ashley shows Renée her supplies and resources for kids in our program during their meeting.

“Ashley also told me that Hart Middle is part of the new Connected Schools Program. She has taken on the role of the Connected Schools Manager. She elaborated that the heart of the Connected Schools philosophy is to work hard to bring the community into its school. She contacts parents and guardians when things are going well. There is a renewed push to bring in mentors to work with the students. Ashley is also working on adding further case management for the most vulnerable children who are at the greatest risk.”

“The part the students like about the Connect Schools Program is the emphasis on “PBIS,” Positive Behavior Incentive Supports. When Ashley interacts with students, or when teachers work with students, and they see a real effort being put forth on an issue that a child is having — whether it’s attendance, manners, or a school subject such as math — then the student gets a token that can be redeemed for a variety of desirable items. For example, one token may be used for a tube of Chapstick or lip balm, which is popular. Or a few more tokens may be redeemed for a binder or several for a pack of headbands or barrettes in the proper colors,” explained Renée.

“The reward part of the Program gives students something to work towards and builds up their self-esteem. We are incredibly proud to be working with Hart Middle School to support their great efforts to lift children up both educationally and academically.”

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How do I sponsor a child in Washington, D.C.?

You can sponsor a child in Washington, D.C. in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in Washington, D.C. who is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD