Newsletter from the desk of Clare Hanbury
Issue 7: January 2012
Summary
In this e-newsletter I describe some of the work I’ve been involved with between October 2011 and January 2012 with a particular focus on my work in promoting children's participation. You can also access it by clicking on the Newsletter 7 link on the left hand side.
1. The 100
The 100 are 100 x 140 character length messages on child health and child action. With the help of a small team of advisers who know about 'mobile health', I am developing a resource hub for those involved in setting up SMS campaigns. The project has its parent in New World International. I met the wonderful chair of New World International, Penny Shales - an accomplished film maker and all things media. The Cambridge based Humanitarian Centre have given me an intern to work with me on this project. Regular readers of this blog will remember that this project is to honour the memory of a great friend and mentor,
2. Children’s Participation in Nutrition: Tete Province Mozambique
I have set to work on a consultancy with DANIDA to help tackle under-nutrition in Mozambique. In late November I spent 10 days in (the very hot) Tete Province working with a colleague who is very familiar with the context and together we were scoping the existing structures, opportunities and resources that exist for a push to involve children more deeply and fully as messengers of good nutrition.
I have always been fascinated by nutrition issues and have often witnessed how children can be mobilised to made a great impact on the nutritional health and well being of themselves and others. At the same time it is a very sensitive issue to work on. I worked on this a little in Machakos district in Kenya many years ago and with the same person who is now based at the Danish Embassy in Maputo and who is an accomplished development professional. I am thrilled that she is wanting me to help kick start this new initiative. The report is done on a fascinating trip and I expect to become more involved as the project moves forward.
3. A Health Education Curriculum for Save the Children
I am delighted to be working with Save the Children's School Health and Nutrition Team. They have commissioned me to distill best practice and develop a curriculum of 25 core lesson plans which can be used, where necessary in the schools they reach. The work is rather like making a jigsaw puzzle where there are many different pieces of very high quality that need to be brought together to create the whole picture. The work also requires me to go into the very latest health advice and information on subjects such as schistosomiasis, intestinal worms, infant feeding and weaning practices. It is exciting to find new ideas and new advice and it is also reminds me how important it is to constantly check on the accuracy of health information we promote and to keep publications up to date.
4. Blogging
In other newsletters I would not put this under a separate heading but I have had such a great response to my blog posts lately and lots of new subscribers and this has inspired me to become more regular with looking for and posting content that I hope is useful – on the blog and on Twitter. In particular I posted a lot around Global Handwashing Day. I am trying out guest blog posts. Thank-you Sarah Huxley and Claire O'Kane. Please do contact me if you have something to share that you think will be of interest to the community. I am also trying out posting conversations I am having on skype with experts about health issues or other issues of interest to those involved in the ‘how – to’s’ in children’s participation. Again if you have something you wish to discuss or an issue you would like to hear discussed then please let me know.
5. Teaching, resources and your help needed
In the last couple of months I have taught on a course at Harvard by video link and I have really enjoyed connecting with an academic colleague there. The presentation aimed to help students incorporate ideas about children’s participation in their project proposals to improve health through education or through an educational setting (e.g. a school health program). The collaboration reminded me of the importance of continuously trying to improve and develop the work that I do and underpinning it with the latest research and thinking. Through this new connection I became aware of new books and resources relevant to my field and have set up a page of links in my blog (press the Toolbox button). I have had GREAT feedback about this list! If you have any comments on or additions to this list then let me know. My preferred links are to materials which are FREE and, if they are health materials, they need to be up to date
News on my publications
- I have FINALLY been sent copies of the HIV & AIDS Good Policy and Practice Guide. Pre-service Teacher Education Booklet 6. I developed this with colleagues at Unesco and it was published in April 2011. The publication looks good and may be of interest. Please find the link in Newsletter 6.
- A module on Children's Participation for the UNICEF publication and global Child Friendly Schools initiative. I was commissioned to do this by the Child-to-Child Trust and one year later there is no news of it. It’s a pity not least because alongside this module were other very useful modules too in WASH and environmental education. I am looking forward ot seeing them all.
- Monitoring and Evaluating Life Skills for Youth Development for the Jacobs Foundation. Guidelines and Toolkit. I have just completed posting extracts 15 from the Toolkit on my lifeskills handbooks blog to help publicise this practical field guide. Click here: It is FREE to download. I expect to do some training with their staff this year.
- Training materials and a toolkit for adults working with children on Child Protection in Children’s participation.
In 2010, I developed a training module and toolkit module for adults working with children on Child Protection in Child Participation for the Keeping Children Safe Coalition and The Child-to-Child Trust. I did this with wonderful colleagues from a number of different agencies who came from all over Africa to a writing workshop in Sierra Leone to work with me on the manuscript. We developed ideas with 80 children! We found several flaws in the original plans and worked on a new structure together. These colleagues then field tested a revised version of the toolkit that emerged from this work at the workshop and the next version was then tested in London in a second workshop. It was a happy co-creation!
Like so many publications, it has taken a LONG while to get the materials ready They were launched in November HOWEVER, I am very disappointed at their unexpected decision to sell the toolkit at a high price (£75 for the whole toolkit and £35:00 for the DVD). I had thought that the materials would be made available as a free download. It is my view that toolkits are only a starting point for people and unsuitable for marketing as branded commercial products. Child protection issues have to be handled very sensitively and need careful adaptation at a local level. If you can afford them contact “Keeping Children Safe” for more details.
Other news
- In October, I attended the launch of the Humanitarian Centre's year long focus on Global Health and will be doing some training for them on Children’s Participation in Health in March. This week (Jan 20th) I am attending a conference they have organised on Non Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) as a follow up to the Sept 2011 UN Summit on NCDs. This was a tremendous opportunity to bring the world’s attention to the global burden of death, disability and poverty caused by NCD’s. The Cambridge Post-UN Summit Conference seeks to capitalise on the momentum and energy the Summit created around NCD’s, and put together appropriate agendas for further UK research, action and policy on NCD’s and mental health in the developing world. It will be interesting.
- Meeting with Robert Chambers lin the autumn got me back onto the wonderful website on community-led total sanitation and from there to look at many of the child-led and school-led sanitation projects. Here is the post that highlights these case studies. they are well worth a read and I have been in touch with several of the authors.
- I am coaching/mentoring three people who ‘won’ my Special New Year Offer to spend some time talking with me and I am enjoying this and hopefully I am being useful to them too!
- I am in the process of revising my Lifeskills Handbook with a master NLP trainer. I was expecting this to be complete in February but due to our current high volume of work, publication has been postponed. If you have a particular interest in this publication please let me know and I will attach your name to a special list of people to be notified as the publication date is clarified.
THANK-YOU’s are due to the following people who have supported me and my work in the last 4 months in many and various ways! It has been an incredibly exciting period! Anna-Joy, Anise, Barbara, Christiana, Claire H. Claire O’K, Hajo, Ken, Kirsten, Nat, Patrick, Sarah, Sarah H, Penny and Nuzzly. Your have been wise and wonderful.
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