KIDS FOR KIDS New Projects

Latest news from Darfur:

KIDS FOR KIDS is the only the only charity created specifically to help the children of Darfur long term. Throughout the past 8 years, and right through the conflict, we have continued to help communities living beyond the camps. In a recent visit to America, Trustees visited the Department of State to discuss with representatives of America's Special Envoy for Sudan, General Scott-Gration, the possibility of help at last being provided for sustainable development in Darfur. But so far nothing is being done. Yet the news from Darfur is extremely worrying. The rains across the whole of East Africa have been disappointing. It is already known that, with less than 30% of expected rain in vast areas of Darfur, the harvest will fail. Plans need to set in place now to prevent children becoming severely malnourished. These are children who are already experiencing malnourishment because aid agencies are not helping families who live outside the camps.

This is why the support that Kids for Kids is giving is so crucial. We are enabling people to help themselves. Our current three year Project Agreement is providing training for 30 new KIDS FOR KIDS villages, each year, PLUS the provision of goats and donkeys to 10% of the families in each community - enabling over 200,000 people to stay in their homes. Leaders of communities have told us that people are moving to Kids for Kids villages because they 'have a chance'. We need help to support as many villages as possible in the coming months.

We were helping children in Darfur BEFORE the conflict started, and we will continue to help desperately needy families long after peace returns. KIDS FOR KIDS was supporting communities in Darfur before the violence erupted; we are known - and welcomed  - by the authorities - and they acknowledge that Kids for Kids will be helping children long after the conflict is over.

The team in Darfur who implement our projects is headed by Salim Ahmed Mohammed Salim the new Project Manager, and reports show that the affect of our goat loans alone is dramatic in the way the provision of animals helps families to withstand potential disasters. We need to be able to provide more animals as soon as possible.

We work with the villagers themselves, enabling them to run the projects, thus ensuring sustainability. We are working through organisations such as the villagers marketing network who we train in book keeping and accountability.

If we give up ,many many children will lose their one chance of a better future.  By constantly finding new ways of delivering our projects, we have been able to continue, even during the worst violence.  

The training we provide to communities is essential if our projects are to be long term. Communities run them themselves, selecting (with our guidance and using criteria we agree together) committees which are answerable to the village as a whole. Training covers accountability, book keeping, animal husbandry, running a revolving veterinary drug scheme - and much more. This ensures long term sustainability.

We are seeking support for the very basics of life - water, food, blankets, health care - to give these families a real chance.

VILLAGES SPONSORED INDIVIDUALLY - because the aim of our combined projects is to transform each individual community you can now sponsor a whole village. TWO MORE VILLAGES have already been sponsored this season. Can you join up with friends - like Carol in America whose Tuesday Ladies' Circle in Peterboro are raising funds for 'their own' village!

Additional to our main Programme, we are appealing for 2 blankets for each family, in all of our villages.

CAN YOU ADD TO YOUR SHOPPING LIST £32 ($18) FOR TWO BLANKETS AND A MOSQUITO NET PLEASE!

One blanket is just £12! (($48)

We are aiming to provide goat loans (we lend 6 goats for two years, after which the family passes on 6 first born offspring to another family, and so on, providing an asset for the whole village) donkey loans and all the things on our Gift List (please see the How to Help page).

The current Programme will help 64,162 people in 10,694 families across 30 new KIDS FOR KIDS VILLAGES.

This is in addition to the existing 21 KIDS FOR KIDS VILLAGES.

It is not easy at the best of times ensuring projects run in such a remote region, and the continuing violence creates endless problems. Recently for example there was no telephone or internet communication outside El Fasher, North Darfur.  Can you imagine what this would do to the economy, say of Edinburgh, if communications broke down.  There is no railway to El Fasher and it is hundreds of miles by road to Khartoum.

BUT the worrying news is that the price of animals is still going up. This is very bad news for families in Darfur. We are all facing serious inflation, the results of the international financial crisis, but perhaps the problems facing families in Darfur will help put our problems into perspective? In Darfur mothers have had to sell even the blankets for their small children if they need medicine for their family. A stark choice it is difficult to contemplate.

KIDS FOR KIDS is committed to funding a minimum of 150,000, for each of the next three years, to help families stay in their villages. Many families which were already facing great hardship, are hosting people made homeless because of the conflict. CAPITAL INTERNATIONAL is the first to help these families. "I cannot thank the Trustees enough" said Patricia "This support means a great deal - please can you help us give more families a chance?"