Bloody Valentine

Bleeding Roses

February 14th. Not all of us are willing to simply 'go with the flow'. Me for one. Public displays of Valentine's Day don't sit comfortably with me, full stop. But more than that we might consider the view that Valentine's Day is sometimes little more than a distraction that masks deeper commercial exploitation. Whilst people are immersed in the idea of romance, balloons and roses, we should also spare a thought for all those poor Ecuadorian and Kenyan children who supply the European and North American fresh flower industry by toiling for low pay under the sun for 12 hour shifts. It is their blistered bleeding fingers that go towards many of the floral bouquets and displays that mark this day.

What do they say? 

Time to wake up and smell the roses.

 

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Education: A Human Right

I begin this posting with a quote that I used this summer for my thesis:

"Hope dims for universal education by 2015 … The total number of children out of school is … 69 million in 2008. Almost half of these children (31 million) are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than a quarter (18 million) are in Southern Asia." (see The Millennium Development Goals Report, United Nations, 2010).

In their 2010 analysis, The Global Campaign For Education reported that if “current trends continue, the slowdown in progress in enrolments will mean that in 2015 there will be more children out of school than there are today. In addition, too often the quality of education on offer is very poor, leading to early drop-out and illiteracy”.

As we lead up to International Literacy Day, UNESCO report that in 2008, 796 million adults (15 years and older) could not read or write. The Right to Education Project state what many of us have come to expect from education, but one that we don't always see in real numbers.

"As well as being a right in itself, the right to education is also an enabling right. Education ‘creates the “voice” through which rights can be claimed and protected’, and without education people lack the capacity to ‘achieve valuable functioning as part of the living’. If people have access to education they can develop the skills, capacity and confidence to secure other rights. Education gives people the ability to access information detailing the range of rights that they hold, and government’s obligations. It supports people to develop the communication skills to demand these rights, the confidence to speak in a variety of forums, and the ability to negotiate with a wide range of government officials and power holders."

One Laptop Per Child - Why?

Continued from previous posting ... Why give a laptop to a child who may have no electricity or even running water?

In Part 2 of the video produced by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, this is a fundamental question is explored. Provides some very valuable food for thought.

One Laptop Per Child - Mission

There are many arguments and counter arguments in regards to the effectiveness of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, but put like this, there is a sense of purpose for project itself. This is the first of a two parter - the second video which will follow in the next posting defines the "laptop" project as a "education" project.

The Colour of Blood

I have a friend* who has a done a most wonderful thing. A month ago he added to his family by travelling to Africa and adopting an orphaned child.

There will always be the argument about taking children out of their cultures - but there can never wholly be an absolute right or an absolute wrong when what stares you back in the face is a two month old child, severely undernourished, sick and weak. What choice do we make when faced with this dilemma?

Perhaps the 'ideal' solution is to move to the country so that a child can be raised amongst their own cultural kind, but it is never that easy - conflict zones have their own dangers and people often make the choice to move to places where opportunities and resources are more plentiful.

Anyway, here in the UAE, there are the usual immigration rules. The child was allowed in, but yesterday, the now three month old child had to leave the country to make a border crossing to revalidate his visa. Three months old. This would not be the case had the child been a British, US, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand national.

Intercontinental adoptions aside, one day, I hope, that extra privileges are not determined by things like colour of skin, passport or national identity. After all, African, Asian or white European cut the surface and then observe underneath - we all have the same colour of blood.

*he is a Pashtoon, point of fact

Adventure Learning: UNICEF in Space

In connection to my interest in Adventure Learning, here's something that has caught my attention - Adventure Learning in Space.

GAO VILLAGE, Mali, October 2009 – In the village of Gao, some 1200 km away from Mali’s capital city of Bamako, local children were given the special chance to speak to UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne – live from space.

In a World of Plenty ...

... why are so many of us hungry?

The child pictured, from Pakistan, is a window cleaner and the sole breadwinner in her family. "Whatever I earn I give to my mother, and when I am a hungry, I eat at the food distribution centre." BBC News

Yesterday's media commentary on the UNICEF report, TRACKING PROGRESS ON CHILD AND MATERNAL NUTRITION raises some alarming statistics - over 90% of the worlds most undernourished children are in Asia and Africa with an estimated 195 million children in developing countries suffering from stunting and poor physical development as a result of undernourishment.

Undernutrition caused by poor feeding and care, aggravated by illness leads to a cycle of recurring illness and faltering growth – irreversibly damaging their development and their cognitive abilities, and impairing their capacities as adults. If a child suffers from diarrhoea – due to a lack of clean water or adequate sanitation, or because of poor hygiene practices – it will drain nutrients from his or her body.

And so it goes, from bad to worse: 1 billion people world-wide are undernourished. and hungry. Children who are weakened by nutritional deficiencies cannot stave off illness for long, and the frequent and more severe bouts of illness they experience make them even weaker. A third of all deaths of under 5s is related to undernutrition.

Fifty-nine percent of under-5s in Afghanistan show signs of moderate to severe stunting and comes out as the country where percentage wise, its the highest. India, Nigeria and Pakistan also have percentages in their 40s.

In a world where there are people over-eating, and too much of our food is wasted, it is outrageous that globally, as we approach 2010, we still have instances when our children go to sleep hungry at night.

Who is Boo Radley?

Literary classics are classics because they've made a certain mark, but, usually I confess to not always enjoying the books that the world, in some form or other, seems to follow. (Perhaps this is changing, but) ordinarily, I've tended to avoid the crowd telling me what I should think. This book, therefore, presents itself as something of a surprise discovery.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a modern literary classic. I never did read the book at school, had never read a review and knew little of the classical film that it was turned into. All of which is a relief because the book would have had a different set of attachments altogether. I happened to pick up the book, quite by accident, at a bookstore here in Abu Dhabi last year. I began reading it before summer, but forgot to pack it when I travelled. I then resumed the remainder of the book on my return.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a real warm story of growing up in Alabama in the 1930s, seen from the perspective of a (white) child. The moral of the story? Never be too quick to judge ... you never know a person until you've walked in their shoes. The children in the book, Scout and Jem have an inspirational father in the shape of Atticus Finch who remains a level headed character throughout - he stands up there as a fine role model for both his children and his community. The racial tensions are captured by Harper and dealt with sensitively - Tom Robinson, the (black) man on trial becomes a fall guy, though as Atticus points out, not the first in America's history.

Boo Radley, is an interesting character - he lives only doors away - the children's imagination about him only adds to the rumours of his isolation. Harper Lee never wrote much beyond this book after it was published in 1960, and whilst Boo Radley turns out to be a hero in the end, he is never seen again by Scout and Jem never gets to thank him. We never, as a result get to know him and continues to remain a mystery that Harper, never quite solves for us.

Favourite quotes?
1. "Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."
2. "Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in."

Grief: Balance of Equals

Every generation has its heroes, so I don't belittle the signifance of Michael Jackson's contribution to popular music and to his family, in particular this will be a difficult time.

I believe, without exception that on a world scale, we're all equal, it is just that some people accumulate more wealth and fame and so on but in the presence of our Creator, Allah, we're all the same. That means when people are maimed, injured and killed in the various conflicts around the globe, ever loss is as tragic as the loss of a superstar. Wasn't it MJ's sister, herself, Janet who once said that when the lights are out, "in complete darkness we are all the same".

Children of War

The reality to the chaos of war are the children who get displaced when families are forced to leave. It's a tragedy. I have children too. I tell them that they are lucky because we are in a safe place. We are the same, after all. The same as the children of Swat in the pictures here.

The violence in the Malakand Division has led to the biggest movement of people within Pakistan since the Partition of India in 1947.

I was sent this link (see http://www.swatvalleyappeal.org.uk). It's a humaritarian appeal: