100 Word Challenge » World Vision

Week#12

5sc1 — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 09:24:11 +0000

As you will all know I’m sure, there has been a terrible disaster in the Philippines caused by Typhoon Haiyan. Whole towns have been destroyed and thousands of people have died. Many children will have lost their homes and parents.

The Disasters Emergency Committee here in the UK has set up an appeal to raise funds to help. World Vision is a charity that is working with the DEC and they have set up a project called ‘Bottles of Hope’. This is an appeal for people to fill a water bottle with coins and send them what they save.

TYPHOONHAIYAN Distribution of 1000 family food kits to victims of Typhoon Haiyan (Hurricane Yolanda) in Tabogon, north Cebu island, the Philiipines.
World Vision, in partnership with Samsung Company, gave 1000 families a 15 day supply of food and water. The food consisted of rice, sardines, lentils and cooking oil. The target is is deliver food aid to 80,000 families.

" data-medium-file="https://static.ed.gs/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/11/Need_help-300x202.jpg" data-large-file="https://static.ed.gs/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/11/Need_help.jpg" /> DMC/Merlin keyword: TYPHOONHAIYAN A Typhoon Yolanda child survivor never mind walking for few kilometres under the scorching sun and through the massive devastation just to have access to safe and clean drinking water for her entire family. Food, medicines and potable water are the immediate needs here in Leyte.

" data-medium-file="https://static.ed.gs/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/11/bottles_hope-300x199.jpg" data-large-file="https://static.ed.gs/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/11/bottles_hope.jpg" /> DMC/Merlin Keyword: TYPHOONHAIYAN
John shows his grandmother’s house where they hid first. He and his parents ran to the nearest village hall after Haiyan was tearing apart his grandmother’s house bit by bit.

Story by Lanie Carillo/ Communications Specialist / World Vision Philippines:
A table in a small village hall that would soon be cramped at night time by families left homeless by super typhoon Haiyan serves as baby Patrick’s new home. Curled in a corner, baby Patrick was fast asleep, unaware of what just happened in his hometown.

His mother, Rowena, sitting outside the hall, was listening to a World Vision staff talking to a village official. A few minutes later, baby Patrick made a sound. Rowena went inside and rocked him slowly in her arms to put him to sleep. When he was silent, she put him back in the middle of the table to avoid falling.

Rowena recounts the day Typhoon Haiyan landed in the northern part of Cebu on November 9. “We ran inside the gym but after several minutes the gym’s iron-sheet roof was also blown away. We ran again to the village hall to take cover. The wind and rain were strong and whistling. I just gave birth to Patrick through caesarian. I was running under the rain, carrying my baby. My husband was also running with our eldest son. We feared then that if Haiyan also blew away the roof on the village hall, we would have nothing to go to and protect us from Haiyan’s rain and wind,” recounts Rowena in Bisaya, a dialect spoken in Cebu.

Outside, many of the houses were damaged. Fallen trees, roofs and house debris littered every corner in Libertad, a small village in Bogo City, where the wrath of Haiyan passed and affected all people. Bogo City has a population of more than 82,000, which are all affected by Haiyan. Like all the trees, electric posts are also damaged leaving the city in total darkness at night. Communication is also a problem. Typhoon Haiyan has displaced 65,907 people in Cebu, the Office of Civil Defense Central Visayas reported.

Rowena’s husband, Jerry, made a living by selling coals. He earns Php130 (3 USD) a week. They used to have a small garden planted with some vegetables that they can use for food. Life then for them was difficult but made doubly difficult in the aftermath of Haiyan. Without money to buy food nor garden to pick vegetables, Rowena’s family would usually eat porridge, supplied by the local social welfare agency of the government.

A few meters away from Rowena is a family whose house was also damaged by Haiyan. John, 4, points to his new home — what was formerly his family’s convenience store but was turned to a house after Haiyan wrecked their house. “We ran to grandma’s house,” John said, “but her place was also damaged. We ran to the village hall. There were many people there. I was shivering and merely looking outside. I saw trees falling and roofs flying. We waited inside until the storm calmed.”

“It was difficult,” John’s mother, Nancy, says. “Everything that we have, our house, our appliances were damaged in an instant.”

Nancy’s home, a 20-square meter house, is in total wreckage. All their things, including clothes, a television, and wooden chairs are damaged. They were able to save a few things — a wooden bed and a cabinet.

“We just finished paying the installment of our house that cost Php18,000 (400 USD) and our TV at Php6,000 (133 USD). I didn’t know that we would still end up with nothing. All those amounts of money are now wasted,” she adds.

Nancy’s husband works in a nearby water refilling station, which is one of the most important businesses among the towns devastated by typhoon Haiyan. “Drinking water is difficult,” Nancy shares. “You are lucky if you can pay Php25 (less than one USD) for a 5 gallon of water. Most of the people here cannot buy it. So they just take water from the well, boil it and drink.” The well that Nancy refers to has been left unused for years since people in her village already have water pipes. But all the water pipes were also destroyed.

John came to his mother, drinking a cup of water from a mug that looks like a soccer ball. He smiled and ran again inside the house. “It is difficult to recover especially when you have no money and you’re hungry,” Nancy says, her eyes pensive, as she looks to her neighbor, whose house was also damaged.

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They have been in touch with 100WC and have asked if we can help. They know that words of support can really make a difference to people who are having a really rough time so this week’s prompt is to write:

A Letter in a Bottle

Send some encouragement and hope to those children in the Phillipines so that they have the strength and courage to carry one. As usual, it is only to be 100 words long.

The link will close on Saturday 23rd November

The post Week#12 appeared first on 100 Word Challenge.

Week#24 Showcase

5sc1 — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:22:09 +0000

Week #24 was a special week as we worked with World Vision and it was super to see so many wonderful posts. Here are the showcase pieces. If you would like a Special Showcase badge for your blog please get in touch!

Bill in Yr.6 at Brunswick House, Kent, UK

Taylor in Yr.5/6 at Stockbridge Primary, Hants, UK

Ramneet in Yr.5 at Campsbourne School, London, UK

Danielle in Yr.4 at Leigh St Peter's, Wigan, UK

Robin in Yr.5 at Sir James Henderson School, Milan, Italy

Lucy in Yr.6 at Layton Primary, Blackpool, UK

Kizzy in Yr.5 at Stubbins Primary School, Bury, UK

Bridget in Upper Juniors at Petwithall School, Runcorn, UK

Ellen in Yr.6 at Yetman School, NSW, Australia

Ishika in Yr.6 at British International School, Brussels

Shivam in Yr.5 at Brunswick House, Kent, UK

CONGRATULATIONS EVERYONE!!

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Week#24

5sc1 — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:41:13 +0000

URGENT MESSAGES!

There are still some comment boxes that we can't get into. Please, please, please check them.
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Week#22 Showcase can be seen HERE!

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This week we have a special prompt provided by World Vision.

World Vision is an international children's charity, focusing on improving the lives of children in some of the world's toughest places'

www.worldvision.org.uk

This is Andualem.

Andualem is 12 and he lives in Ethiopia. He’s tucking into a big plate of his favourite food, injera. Injera is a special Ethiopian pancake that you eat with your hands – you tear off a strip, dab it in spicy sauce, and then try to get it in your mouth before you drop any!

Injera is also a meal that you share with your family and friends – it often comes on a big plate so that everyone can gather round and enjoy it at the same time.

Right now, children all over the world are hungry, because they don’t have enough food to eat, but there is enough food to feed everyone if, like Andualiem, we could all learn to share what we have.

Write a message about this to Andualem and others, starting with…

‘If we share…’

As usual, you have 100 words to add to these 3. If you are not sure what to do, please look at the tabs at the top of the page which should help. If you still have questions, leave them below as a comment or contact me on twitter @theheadsoffice

The link will be open until 9pm (GMT) 23rd March

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100 Word Challenge – Week#33

5sc1 — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:46:43 +0000

The Showcase for Week#32 will be published separately.

This week in the UK we are going to be celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. We have time off school and there are going to be street parties and lots of fun. This is not the sort of thing we do every day but generally our lives are good.

The prompt this week is a little different. We are going to share the life of two children in Niger which is not a happy place to be at the moment. There is a huge crisis with people not having enough food or water. Here are their stories:

Story One:

Fatimata and her grandmother belong to the Felani tribe who are pastoralists. Owning cattle is very important to them.

The family’s animals died in 2010 during the food crisis and they have been struggling to find food ever since.

Fatimata says: ‘We used to have 3 cows, 6 goats and 5 sheep but they all died two years ago. After they died we were forced to work in the goldmine as we don’t have enough food to eat.

‘I always feel hungry, my stomach hurts and I have a headache.’

People are being forced underground to work in order to earn money to eat. The boys and men will risk their lives going deep underground to mine for gold.

The mine shafts and tunnels are not secured and often collapse. The women and girls work around the edge of the mine sifting the silt.

The landscape is barren and desolate. Dried up river beds and the arid land stretches and as far as the eye can see.

Fatimata has never been to school. Her Grandmother Amsata Issa, 65, says: ‘How can she go to school when we have no food.’

The work is physical and hard. The environment is harsh with temperatures soaring well over forty degrees celsius. Every day Fatimata and her grandmother collect and sift the silt in hope of finding flecks of gold.

They also bag up the silt that they have refined and then sell onto to others who work at the mine and will use water and chemicals to pan for the gold. Fatimata is one part of a long process of extracting the gold.

Fatimata says: ‘I’m very tired after spending the day working and often my arms ache. I wish that I didn’t have to come here and I would prefer to stay at home and be able to go to school.

‘When we do have food I like to eat beans but my favourite is cake.

‘After work if I’m not too tired I like to play babysitting with my friends. We’ll wrap up a flip flop and pretend it is a baby. We also really like to climb the trees.

‘When we had animals the cows were my favourite, I used to really like drinking the milk. When I grow up I would like to get married to somebody who has animals. I would like to have ten cows and walk with them to the pasture.’

Story Two:

Roukayatou and her family are profoundly affected by the food crisis. Her husband Hama Amadou has left the village to work in the gold mines as their crop failed last year and they have no food reserves at all.

Every year he goes to work in the mine during the dry season but this year he left early as the crop failed early and he knew they would have no food.

Four of Roukayatou’s children are sponsored by World Vision – the youngest is not.

Roukayatou says: ‘I’m really worried as I’ve not heard from my husband since he left six months ago. He has gone to work in the gold mine during the dry season every year since we got married. He always sends back money. This year I’ve heard nothing from him.’

Working in the gold mine is physically hard and dangerous work.

Four of Roukayatou’s five children are sponsored by World Vision and they are in school. Her eldest daughter Fatima Amadou, 16, eldest child (pictured) female, is doing a vocational sewing course. She hopes one day to be able to run her own tailoring business.

Her youngest daughter Bousraou Amadou, 5, will start school when she is seven but she would like to be a teacher when she grows up.

Roukayatou says: ‘The sponsorship makes a really big difference to our lives, my children can go to school and the projects that World Vision do in our village such as building the well and the seed bank really help us.’

‘I have been part of the women’s gardening group here in the village for seven years, usually the vegetables provide an income and food to feed us.

‘But this year I had an accident when I fell off a donkey and cart. This meant that I could not get to my garden to water the vegetables and my Meringa trees.

‘The food crisis is much worse this year, the crops failed earlier and we are now waiting for the rain to come so we can plant our seeds.

‘At the moment all we have to eat is a packet of corn soya blend from the World Food Programme. These are handed out free to under five year olds.

‘We have two packets at the moment, we eat half a packet at lunchtime and then half a packet at dinner time.’

This would amount to no more than a handful of food each.

‘I’m really worried and if my husband does not send me any money I will be forced to go to the capital Niamey to try and find work as a cleaner. My children will have to come with me meaning they will all have to leave school.’

The prompt is to write a letter to either Fatima or Roukayatou. You can tell them about your life or let them know how you feel about their story. The only restriction is that you must only use 100 words.

If you are new here please read ‘What is 100WC?’ and ‘How To Enter the Challenges’

The link will be open for two weeks as it is a holiday here in the UK and will close on 12th June

If you would like to know about the work of World Vision please go to their website. The name of this campaign is Share Niger

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