Back to their books after the storm - under a big tent, school's open again
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“I like everything about school,” says six-year old Min Min. “I like to read – and play with my friends.” He’s in second grade, but the night the cyclone hit, his school was ruined – only a skeleton of its building still stands. But right next door, children are back at their books, thanks to a temporary school built by Save the Children, allowing 94 students to return to their studies. Eight of their schoolmates didn’t survive the storm; they were among 40 people who perished in this small village of just 600 in the rice fields two hours outside Yangon City.
“We lost everything,” Min Min’s mother says. Her son remembers the cyclone with clarity and calm, “I wasn’t scared and I didn’t cry. I was with my mother when it happened, and we just ran to an old barn.” They were lucky the barn was so close-by, because they had no warning of the storm. His mother recalls, “It went on all night, I was trying to keep Min Min warm with a blanket, I was very scared.” In the morning, they saw the extent of the damage from the winds they’d heard howling all night; huge trees everywhere, dropped like matchsticks; buildings and homes were flattened or unusable. “Our house was completely destroyed,” she says. Today, they’ve been able to rebuild a place to live using bamboo and what materials they could salvage from the wreckage of their old home.
Save The Children, with support from the IKEA Foundation, was able to help Min Min and his classmates return to their school routine quickly, which helps immensely after a disaster strikes. As one of the teachers puts it, “We’re so happy with this temporary school. This community really values education, so it’s important to them that their children can go to school here.” Although Min Min is still afraid of strong winds and storms, his mother explains, “Playing and studying at school has helped him reduce his fears.
In Pakistan, SUNNAN solar lamps shine a light so kids can study
War disrupts children’s lives in so many ways. Rabia and her ten brothers and sisters fled their small village when it wasn’t safe anymore. They’re but a handful of the tens of thousands displaced by military conflicts on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Their father – a mason by trade – struggles to support the family while they’re all living in the Kacha Garhi Refugee camp.
To help children like Rabia resume some semblance of their childhoods, UNICEF worked with the Non-Resource Center (YRC) to establish five primary schools in three of the refugee camps so that students could restart their studies. The schools include separate facilities for boys and girls, which encourages greater enrollment.
To make it easier for the children to study, the IKEA Foundation donated SUNNAN solar-powered lamps for every child enrolled in the camp schools. UNICEF worked with the YRC to make sure every student got a lamp.
Rabia received one of the solar lamps, and it’s inspired her to stay in school; “I am happy I got my Sunnan lamp. I have decided to stay to attend school till completion of studies”. She’s thrilled to be able to read, write and study in her tent after dark now. And her parents, seeing what an incentive the lamp has been for her, make sure Rabia gets to school regularly and are rewarded by how much better she’s doing in her classes – and by her new dedication to her homework.
‘Building back better’ - After the quake, rural China enjoys a fresh drink of water
In all the devastation of the earthquake in Gansu, China, the community water supply of Caochuan Village wasn’t damaged – because they didn’t have one. But thanks to UNICEF-supported efforts and their ‘Building Back Better’ commitment, not only are water supplies that were destroyed in the quake zone being restored, but clean water is also being piped to families and communities who never had it before.
“We had to use an old well – even though the water wasn’t safe,” says 10-year old Wang Wenjuan, a 4th grader at Caochuan Primary School. She and her classmates now drink from taps installed at their school as part of the new community water system.
Knowing the fruits of their labour would be fresh water for their families, the villagers were happy to haul all the heavy supplies – pipes, gravel and sand – to the mountaintop where engineers worked with them to construct a filtration system. Now, untreated water is pumped 500 metres up the mountain where it’s cleaned and stored in a tank until needed; and then flows by gravity pipes to the 1,600 residents of the village below. UNICEF, with support from the IKEA Foundation, has been able to connect their clean water supply to taps at the school as well as each of the 270 households. So now, instead of walking kilometers to fetch a bucket of questionable water, everyone in Caochuan can easily fill a pot for cooking or just enjoy a refreshing, clean drink of water at the turn of a tap.
The spiraling conflict in Libya has sent several hundred thousand people fleeing from their homes to bordering countries. The IKEA Foundation has contributed with around 60 containers, containing products for the benefit of refugees in Tunisia
Since the violence erupted in Libya in mid-February 2011, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to neighboring countries, mostly to Egypt and Tunisia, while thousands more are waiting to cross these borders. By May 9th some 350 000 had crossed the borders to Tunisia alone. UNHCR established its presence in Tunisia on February 24th 2011 to respond to the mass influx of people crossing into Tunisia to escape the violence in Libya. UNHCR is providing shelter and protection and distributing essential goods.
IKEA contributes to UNHCRs work for refugees reaching Tunisia by sending 50,000 mattresses, 50,000 quilt covers and 50,000 quilts, the latter especially adapted to the often harsh conditions in the refugee camps. To save essential time, UPS offered to airlift 10.000 mattresses.
One of the areas that IKEA Foundation has chosen to focus on is refugees of conflicts and natural disasters – one of the world’s most vulnerable groups – to help them prepare for reclaiming their everyday lives more quickly and more fully.
The IKEA Foundation funds programmes in several geographical areas.
When it comes to emergency relief, the IKEA Foundation’s support is based on our partners’ needs assessment and focuses solely on developing countries. We support where we, together with our partners, see a need for certain IKEA products or provide financial support.
Breast-feeding saves lives
Beyond being the world’s most convenient fast food, breast-feeding is best for babies in so many ways, offering immunity from disease, balanced nourishment, and easy digestibility. But superstitions and misunderstandings often made mothers delay breast-feeding or give newborns poor substitutes instead. These days, that’s changing, thanks to awareness programs organized by UNICEF and the Government of India, with support from the IKEA Foundation to help more mothers learn how vital breast-feeding can be for their babies to survive, thrive, and grow to be smarter and stronger throughout their lives.
“I say when mother goats have their kids, they don’t come to us asking for our milk, so why do we ask goats to feed our babies?” chuckles Gita Devi, 20. This brings a smile and an opportunity for her to convince new mothers she counsels in the breast-feeding program at the Anganwadi centre in Purio Sarna Toli village just how important it is to breast-feed from the moment a baby is born. Her healthy baby boy, Priyanshu Kumar Sahu, suckles happily as she chats about how precious breastmilk is for babies, particularly colostrum, the rich first ‘milk’ from a mother’s breast in the hours after birth – which carries important immunities babies need to fight off disease. Out of cultural traditions, many mothers discarded the colostrum and didn’t start breast-feeding until their ‘regular milk’ came in, not realizing that they were throwing away years of disease protection for their children “I tell them that a mother’s first milk is like giving an immunization injection, a tonic for extra protection,” Devi explains.
Superstitions and rituals are partly to blame. So-called ‘eating down’ during pregnancy, where women deliberately eat less in order to have smaller infants (and an easier birth), produces undernourished infants who struggle to survive. ‘Hell-fasting’ is a ritual act of purification where new mothers eat nothing for days after delivery – when they should be eating extra food to regain their strength and produce nutritious milk for their infant. Babies are further at risk when fed substitutes – of contracting diarrhea from goat’s milk and honey, or a range of diseases from formulas mixed with contaminated water.
As a newlywed and young mother, Gita Devi was happy to volunteer to be a Local Resource Person (LRP). “I enjoy helping other mothers and children. I know this information really helped me and my son,” she says. It was the local anganwadi worker who first explained proper breast-feeding, childcare, maternal health and nutrition to her and now, as one of five LRP’s, she helps counsel about 120 village households.
Evidence of how times are changing, is how much just one mother Gita Devi counselled now knows compared to when her older child was born over a decade ago. Baby Devi, 28, with her seven-month-old son, Laddulal Lohar, napping in her lap explains with wonder, “I learned so much more than I knew for my first child (now 12). These people are a blessing for us all.”
Healthy habits at easy reach: How better sanitation helps students stay in school
Candy-colored water taps at heights children can reach make it easy for students to wash their hands with soap and running water – along with their tin lunch plates – before sitting down at concrete tables and benches under the shade of their lunch shelter at the Sukrit Primary School in the Sonbhadra District of India’s Uttar Pradesh state. “Before, the students were just sitting here and there out on the open ground,” says Mr. Ram Ratan Singh Yadav, a local political officer, proudly showing off the mid-day meal shed his local government helped finance. “It was not hygienic. Now they can all have lunch together,” he said, adding that a few years ago, the school didn’t even have toilets.
“We used to eat on the ground, and mud would get onto our plates,” said Chandra. “Our teacher tells us now to wash the germs off our hands before we eat so that we don’t get sick,” says, Chandra Prabha, 11, as she and her friend Chanda Kumari, 10, hungrily dig into heaping plates of rice and lentils. Sonbhadra is just one of eight districts in Uttar Pradesh where UNICEF has been working since October 2009 to improve sanitation with funding support from the IKEA Foundation. Introducing healthy habits at school helps children stay well so they can stay in school. Kids bring these good habits home, and in addition workers promote proper household hygiene too – because when the entire family stays healthy, children are less likely to drop out to care for an ill family member or need to work to replace the income of a parent who gets sick. It’s part of a broader effort by the IKEA Foundation in partnership with UNICEF to promote the rights of every child to a healthy, secure childhood with access to quality education.
At first glance, government data showed that 94 percent of Uttar Pradesh district schools had toilets for boys and girls, but a closer look found that only 57 percent were functioning. So, UNICEF offered technical support to design child-friendly toilets for schools that consider girls’ and boys’ different needs, and also helped develop a Hygiene Education Package of books and activities to help the children learn healthy habits. Already, 210 schools in Sonbhadra have improved sanitation. It’s a collabor