The displaced communities we work with in Kachin State Myanmar have displayed incredible resilience over the years. Despite living in harsh high altitude conditions in the camps, with no access to services, they have been gathering together to ensure safe spaces for their children to learn, play and recover from what they’ve been through.
 
Currently, the feel in the camps is one of despondence. It has been a year since the last round of peace-talks and there are none planned for the near future. The conflict in the area runs hot and cold, making it impossible for people here to ever settle or feel safe. The last military attack was just a month ago.
 
There are 100,000 displaced Kachin people on the borders, and after nearly seven years, they are still completely trapped. Their route home is littered with landmines, and even if they could survive the journey back, their land has now been sublet by the government to Chinese companies to use for banana plantations, or occupied by drug cartels.
 
Our Asia Regional Manager, John Littleton returned from visiting the camps here last month. He says “It’s the displaced civilians that pay the price for this conflict. They are caught in a political gridlock, and the pride and momentum that carried them through the first season of living in these challenging conditions is beginning to fade”.
 
Aid agencies are still not granted access to many conflict areas, leaving displaced communities cut off from adequate assistance. Children on the Edge remain the only international organisation providing early years support in the most remote camps along the border.
 
As the world’s attention remains elsewhere, this embattled civilian population are not only being forgotten, but beginning to resign themselves to their fate. It is vital that we maintain our support to the communities we are working with at this time.
 
Back the call for peace and accountability by taking action via Burma Campaign UK, and consider becoming one of our regular donors to provide stable support for work like this. For further information about the situation in Kachin, visit our project page.

​Despite the recent snowy weather, local scout group 1st Fetcham Scouts have been busy potting up plants for their ‘Bring and Buy’ sale fundraiser.
 
The Scout Group, who had undertaken the task of fundraising as part of their World Challenge Award, planned the event for the 9th March as part of their ‘Team Work and Team Leader awards’.
 
The event included the sale of delicious home-made cakes, lemonade, raffle tickets and potted plants. The plants had been kindly donated from Squires Garden Centre and decorated by the Scouts themselves.
 
Anita Chamberlain, Scout Leader to the young fundraisers said; ’The Leaders were very proud of the Scouts for taking matters into their own hands when they learned about the people who are supported by Children on the Edge projects. They chose to organise an event to raise money to help children less fortunate than themselves- we think they did fantastically!’
 
The Scouts raised an amazing £270 for Children on the Edge and really made the fundraiser a success.
 
If you would like to get your local club involved in a fundraising event or take on a challenge then send us an e-mail letting us know, and we'll be happy to help you with all your fundraising needs.  

​James Watkins is no stranger to supporting Children on the Edge. Last year he took on the 2017 Brighton Marathon to support our work and this year he’s taking on the world-renowned London Marathon. James is well experienced in marathons as this one will be his 5th, but it is still a huge challenge. Having completed the Los Angeles Marathon, the Brighton Marathon and most recently the Leicester Marathon with his son Sam, he’s making it his personal mission to take on the London marathon for the second time and achieve a personal best by completing it in under 4 hours.
 
As James is a bit of a regular at marathon running we asked him for some tips on what helps when taking on running challenges. His advice was to get a running partner, which he says keeps you honest and accountable for your training. Luckily for James this year, he is training with his son, Sam who is also using his place in the Paris Marathon this year to fundraise for Children on the Edge. The father-son duo are helping each another to stay motivated, even in the most difficult running conditions.
 
The recent snowy weather, though beautiful, has caused some of their training to be moved inside as James glumly admitted that he ran 19 miles on a treadmill last week to avoid the icy roads. A massive achievement to any runner, he still can’t wait to get back outdoors to train in the Spring weather. They’ve also been helping each other to stick with a healthy diet which, though difficult at times, is helping them stay in peak condition. They said that these health benefits are of the best bits of training.
 
For motivation, he finds it helpful to remember that his constant challenges are raising funds for a great cause. He says;  “Children on the Edge is a charity which supports children who are literally on the edge, with no other way to escape their situation. They operate by working with local partners on the ground which makes the work sustainable. It’s admirable and I’m very happy to support it.”
 
Their current total is already over £2,000 and they are hoping to get as close to £3,000 as possible. £3,000 can fund the costs of educating 15 Syrian refugee children in one of our tent schools for an entire year in Lebanon.
 
We hope that all James and Sam’s hard work in training and fundraising gets them to that £3,000 target and below their 4-hour time goal.
 
If you would like to support James and Sam in their London/Paris Marathon fundraising journey then you can donate to their JustGiving page. 
 
If you would like to find out how you can take on your own challenge then visit our challenges page.

There is some good news from Lebanon as the tent schools we support for Syrian refugee children continue to grow. For the past few years we have been working with our local partner, led by Nuna Matar, to provide education in the camps for 430 Syrian children.

The need is so great, that when registration was opened for new classes in January of this year, an additional 180 children were queuing up to be enrolled. Nuna has created four new classes in February, with a plan to open three more in March, bringing the total number of Syrian children enrolled to 500, with a further 100 on the waiting list.

There are significant challenges ahead, however. With many Syrian children out of school for so long, they have often missed out on basic education. Even those who had had access to school have fallen way behind. Nuna said “We were shocked to see so many 10 years old who can’t even write a simple word. These kids have been going to formal schools but have not even learned basic reading or writing skills”. The Lebanese government has opened up classrooms for Syrian refugees, but not every child is able to attend due to lack of space, transport costs, harassment and language barriers.

This has made our tent schools very attractive for Syrian refugees, as they provide a safe environment for children and quality education. Teachers are trained from within the Syrian refugee community, rather than brought in from outside the camps, and this gives a vital sense of familiarity for the children.

Children have begun to feel safe again. One teacher described how they have begun to draw gardens and houses in their classes, a marked difference from the images of war and violence that were being drawn when they first arrived in the camps.

One of these teachers, Aisha, used to work as a teacher in Syria in an area occupied by ISIS. She told us how they were indoctrinating children into their ranks, describing how “They would put heavy weapons in the hands of kids who were 10 years old and younger, … promising all kind of things like money, luring young boys. Parents were not allowed to object”.

Aisha is now grateful to work in a school where she is able to teach in a peaceful and safe environment. Her four children are also enrolled in the school, where they are now blossoming in an environment of peace, without the threat of recruitment or violence.

​It costs just under £1000 to support a refugee teacher for a term at one of the tent schools, and provide them with full teacher training. The buses provided to get children to the schools cost £96 each to run each week. If you feel you can contribute, please click the donate button below. Every contribution, big or small makes a real difference.

Despite significant economic progress in India, there are gaping inequalities, and these inequalities are further pronounced for women. A flagship report from UN Women shows that a young woman from a poor, rural household in India is 5.1 times as likely to be forced into child marriage and 21.8 times more likely to have never attended school than women from wealthier, urban areas.

The report goes on to say that the average Dalit woman in India dies 14.6 years younger than women from higher castes. The main focus of our work in India is to use education to break the cycle of caste discrimination for Dalit communities in Bihar State. The two partner organisations we work with are not only lead by women, but ensure that the women they work with are encouraged, supported and given positive opportunities.

Varsha Jawelgekar who leads the work of Parivartan Kendra in the rural communities outside Patna says “There are hundreds of women and girls who have come into contact with Parivartan Kendra (PK) and it has changed their lives. Half of our team are women and 98% are from Dalit communities. They were all mentored to become volunteers and slowly given the opportunity to work as staff”.

Sr Veena Jacob, founder of Navjeevan Educational and Social Welfare Centre (NESWC), heads up activities in the urban areas of Patna. She describes how “Women and girls believed that their situations couldn’t be changed but now, after working with them, they have begun to believe that if they are given the right opportunities, change is possible”.

​The work in Patna includes supporting Women’s Groups attached to each Learning Centre and ensuring Gender Equality classes which are creating a significant impact in areas of child marriage and discrimination against girls.

In some of the rural communities, we have seen how having women role models as teachers is broadening the perspective of the girls they teach. A group of older girls in Madhual Village described how they were previously not allowed out of the house, and often faced harassment on the way to wherever they were going. This would continue until they are married. They said ‘Now we go to school though, and we are no longer afraid because our teacher is a woman. The best thing was attending the summer camp in Patna as we had never left the village before. It made us feel free and now we dance in the open and at each others houses!’

With a third organisation on the border of Nepal, we also support women and children to escape prostitution and trafficking, by supporting the provision of vocational education. Without this type of training, the girls report that the overwhelming expectation upon them is to work in the sex trade by age 18 or sometimes younger. For this reason, the sewing skills programme provides a critical way out of prostitution for 30 women each year.

Few people are aware that the India-Nepal border is one of the largest corridors for human trafficking on the planet. While the outside world pays little notice, the problem has reached endemic proportions with an estimate of nearly 200,000 Nepalis having already been trafficked into India.​

The vast majority of these victims are women and children who are subjected to forced labour, prostitution, and sexual abuse. The porous, 400 mile-long border between southern Nepal and Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, is an ideal environment for traffickers to operate within.

There has been a further spike in the trafficking of women and children since the devastating April 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The Indian government’s agency charged with protecting its border (Sashastra Seema Bal) reported a “massive spurt” in the forced movement of women and children from Nepal along the Bihar border.While exact numbers are impossible to attain, it is clear that what is already an appalling situation has been made even worse by this natural tragedy.

There are numerous causes for this problem on both sides of the border, but the primary reason is that Nepal is an agrarian country which lacks sufficient infrastructure and economic opportunities to support its population of nearly 23 million people.

​About 90% of its inhabitants rely on subsistence agriculture to survive. More than half of Nepal’s women are illiterate, poorly-educated and, therefore, easily targeted by traffickers.  
​​Each year an estimated 7,000-10,000 women and children are trafficked through Bihar, many ending up in de facto slavery in Bihar’s red-light zones. With nearly a quarter of those trafficked below the age of 16, the situation is particularly grave for children.
​
Currently, the precedent for young girls in these communities is to follow their mothers into prostitution. ​Parents surveyed from the community say they would prefer that their children find other means of employment, but, with limited choices, many children are still drawn into the same line of work.