Child Aid Gaza

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Child Aid Gaza

Geographically the project reaches out indirectly to 6000 families and directly to 3000 family members in Gaza Province.Child Aid Gaza officially started its program in January, 2008.

The project however started its activities in 2007 through community mobilization and necessary preparations to make the project visible. ADPP has been working in activities related on child aid for many years. These projects work with different issues: children’s rights, care of orphans and vulnerable children, community mobilization about the children’s health as subject for adults training, and others. ADPP implements the Child Aid program in many countries all over the world, and also in these provinces of Mozambique: Sofala, Nampula, Inhambane and Gaza.
The idea of the program is to promote some strategies among the community in order to improve the families’ lives, and in consequence, promote a better environment for the kids’ development. The project also promotes several activities straight with the children, but not only that.
The Child Aid project in Gaza province is present in Chokwe district, more precisely in Nwachicoluane area. Chokwe was severely affected by the big flood of the year 2000, and till now the population suffers because of that. During the colonial time, the district was considered the “Rice Storage Bin” of the country, but because of the flood, the water channels used to irrigate Nwachicoluane were destroyed, and the region is completely dry. The project is working in 5 different areas, with about 23060 inhabitants in total.
Besides the difficulties of the population, this area of implementation was chosen because of the presence of an EPF (“Escola de Professors do Futuro”, which is a Teacher Training College also implemented by ADPP) in the same place. The aim of implementing the project in the same area as EPF is to extend this program: reaching more people and developing more activities by using the EPF students’ skills in the community work. With this interaction, the both will collect good fruits; the students and the community. The students will gain a valuable experience, once the development work in the community is part of their training; and the community will have the opportunity to learn from the future teachers many different issues such as: health and hygiene, pre-schools, environment care, and much more. Child Aid Gaza knows that the best way to promote development is to work together with the community; the people by themselves have to take responsibility for their needs. Our actions are decided according to the real needs of the place and its people. We organize the community and stimulate them to talk about their own lives, so they decide what they want (need) to improve in life.

The first activity carried out was to identify the areas the project should be installed. For that, the project leader arrived in the district some months before the beginning of the year, and the project. It was necessary to identify the features of the areas, collect some figures, such as number of inhabitants, and families, before deciding where exactly Child Aid – Gaza would work. Chokwe district is very big, with many small villages that need help. The chosen areas were the ones closer to the EPF, once it was easy to work (there we had already some infrastructure), and also because the areas were affected by the big float of the year 2000, which destroyed big part of the village, so every kind of help is very welcome.
A table specifying the areas and the number of people was presented in the topic 5 of this document – areas of intervention.
Besides the information given by the local government, collection of data about as NGOs working in the area was done, and they are:

- World relief (Auxilio Mundial): they are present in all of the areas we work, they have different projects in each area, and they mainly work with orphans, and HIV/AIDS.
- DSF: there are 4 community centres located in: Nwachicoluane, Conhane, Massavasse and Kotsuane. There, it is offered sewing lessons, carpentry, alphabetisation, and some other activities.
- Save the Children: train mothers in different health issues
- Escola Vida
- Jam Life: they are distributing soy flour to be prepared and served at the primary school

There are still some other small associations working in the areas, promoting some theatre and clubs.

In Mozambique there is a local hierarchy that has to be respected. Before starting working in any place, we have to contact the local leadership. The districts are divided in smaller areas, which are also sub divided in even much smaller areas, and like this successively, till a small group of families can be closely assisted. Chokwe district follows the same line, so we need to find the Director of the district, such as all the leaders and secretaries of the place we want to work, to present ourselves and ask for permission. So far, we work directly with about 30 “secretaries de bairros” and 5 leaders. All the leaders cope very well with the project, and welcome us very much, but not all the secretaries are that open, it requires us some patience till we get their co-operation - some areas are already spoiled, because they said there were many projects around that just showed up, and quit the work in the middle of the way. The local leadership plays an important role in Child Aid - Gaza, because they are the ones to choose the co-ordinators for the project, once the community is not that active.

As mentioned, the local leadership chooses the co-ordinators, but we have to be close to them to be sure that we get the right people. Child Aid – Gaza wants to work mainly with active young people, that are not working or taking part in other activities. The tendency of the local leaders is to choose old people that are already part of some government structure. The problem of working with them is that they are already busy with many meetings, and won’t give priority to Child Aid. Many of them also don’t know how to read and write in Portuguese, and we need these skills to fill some forms, and attend the courses. Another advantage of working with young people is to train and involve them more and more in the issues related on the community development. It is not easy to recruit these youth, because in this area many of them go to South Africa searching for better opportunities.
Besides the co-ordinators, we need committees’ members, and pre-schools teachers. A table with the amount of volunteers working for us is presented in the results. During January and February the volunteers of Nwachicoluane were chosen, and during May the coordinators of the new areas.
In Nwachicoluane we still have some problems with some co-ordinators. With the time, we found out their written skills were not good enough, delaying the enrolment of the families in the area. As they are very active and they’ve been working for already some time, the solution was to find an extra co-ordinator to help them with the Portuguese.
In the first area, Nwachicoluane, 35 T-shirts were distributed to some co-ordinators, pre-school teachers and committee members. Also the local leadership around Chokwe received them

Weekly many meeting are carried out. Since January the Project Leader and the area leaders have been meeting the community; the first meetings in Nwachicoluane were to present the program, and see their interest; then started the meetings to mobilise them to take part in the actions.
We haven’t capacitated the co-ordinators yet (it is planned for July), but weekly there are meetings where there is a small lesson about specific subject, in order to help their work. A “Co-ordinator's manual” was distributed for each co-ordinator, explaining the job in details.

One of the first activities of Child Aid developed with the VAG is the cleaning action. In the end of January one big cleaning was made in the Health Centre, School, and some “Bairros” of Nwachicoluane. Than in the beginning of February one big area, which was out of the first cleaning action, was the target. In April, many volunteers helped to clean the Child Aid community centre after the rehabilitation.

In Nwachicoluane the VAGs were mobilized to promote actions to build latrines, dish racks, and rubbish pit. Before the action, the importance of these cares was explained to the community, and a big amount of them adopted the idea and took part in the activity. The action was not made in one day; during the week, slowly, the families were building their structure, supported and controlled by the co-ordinators. It was done from January until April. As the other areas were opened in May, these activities are just starting there.

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The children's welfare is of first priority in addresing poverty in a Child Aid project

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