September 2021 – Developments in Nepal

Hands With Hands is an association of international and Nepalese friends who work on a voluntary basis on the vision of solidarity with one another. They support Nepalese people and organizations and initiate and finance projects that promote empowerment of the local people and communities. The self-sustaining Annapurna children’s home in Pokhara is the association’s main project at the moment. Read more about the idea and orgins of the project in our blog post from last year.

The situation in Nepal and in the Annapurna children’s home continues to be difficult in the persistent corona situation. The children at the home all caught the corona virus, but thankfully also all recovered from it. In the end Sharada, who had cared for weeks for the sick children, fell ill as well. It was a long infection and she recovered only slowly over 6 weeks. Mercifully, the children and Sharada are now back on their feet. The vaccine rollout in Nepal is very slow. This is partly due to widespread misinformation, which generates scepticism in the population, and also due to the low availability as Nepal received only small supply of surplus vaccine units from America and China via the limited COVAX system.

For months all education has been online. This has been a huge challenge not only for the 40 children at the home, who have to try to continue to keep their studies up under such difficult circumstances, but also for the teachers. Hands with hands has offered teacher training to help the teachers to understand and use the available online tools and forums. While this works with a lot of discipline and effort in the Annapurna children’s home, especially the very poor children in Nepal were not able to attend online classes for months. This lack of education will have dramatic long-term effects for the population. Girls in particular are unlikely to return to school, once it would be possible again. Hands with Hands is planning to generate incentives for the children, especially for girls, to go back to school when the schools reopen (which is not likely to be before April 2022). Small scholarships, school uniforms, materials, and books could be offered to motivate a return to school.

Despite the month-long lock-down the construction on the new earthquake-safe Annapurna children’s home is progressing and the work is now already working on the roof of the second story. However, the 2nd Delta wave is starting to hit Nepal and it is not possible to predict how the expected new lock-down will affect the construction. Hands with Hands hopes that the construction work will be able to continue throughout the lock-down, but that depends on if the building materials can be acquired before the lock-down.

The situation in Nepal is further aggravated by an extremely strong monsoon this year. Luckily the children’s home was not affected too badly by the monsoon, but a school (in the East of Nepal, Sindhupalchock district) was hit very hard by the flooding. Hands with Hands supports this school as well and it was sad to see that a river, which was re-routed by the drastic increase in volume, took out part of the school (6 classrooms!). The courageous efforts of the locals, who build a wall to re-route the water (while standing in the river themselves!), saved the rest of the school. Reconstruction of the school will need efforts and resources in the next couple of months and the monsoon is still scheduled to continue for a couple of weeks.

Despite the dramatic situation, the mood of the people is surprisingly undaunted. Nepal has been hit with such disastrous events, especially in the past 10 years, that the people adopted an accepting good attitude and in the face of catastrophe maintain an optimistic view of the future. And indeed, at least the harvest in the Annapurna children’s home was good this year. The food for the children is secured and 5 new children were taken in care this year. Excess food was given to the poorest in the community. Food care packages were prepared to help especially mothers with young children.

Hands with hands needs donations in order to continue their important and incredible work in Nepal. The donations are needed mainly to acquire building materials for the new children’s home, but also to rebuild the destroyed school and continue to support extremely poor families with food.

Half-year report 2021

The first half of 2021 has been very busy and successful for Moving Child. Major financial decisions, intensive training, exciting project meetings and much more have determined our work. With this half-year report, we want to briefly inform about the latest developments at Moving Child.

Certified foundation management

In April, managing director Ella Lattenkamp received her certification as a foundation manager from the German Foundation Academy. The course covered important topics of everyday foundation work, such as foundation law and tax law, accounting, wealth management, and general foundation management. Whether basic data protection regulation or donation taxation, whether communication strategy or project management, the topics are now familiar. In recent months, Moving Child has implemented many of the impulses from the course. An investment strategy and eligibility criteria have been developed and guidelines for general business management have been drawn up. In addition, our application forms have been structured in an impact-oriented manner and expanded by a section about project sustainability. Moving Child feels equipped to face everyday foundation life with new confidence and embraces the new horizons.

Sustainable investment

The topic of sustainable investment is becoming more and more popular. Since a large part of a foundation’s work is financed by investment dividends and thus investment is an essential part of foundation work, Moving Child has committed itself to the sustainability of its financial activities. This issue was taken on with vigour this year. From a pre-selection of a number of banks with a sustainable concept, the two best candidates were selected, and asset management mandates were awarded. This form of investment not only allows us to tightly control in which companies we invest, but also gives a certain right of co-determination: At general meetings of the companies in which we invest, important questions can be addressed, and direct influence can be exerted on the company management. Moving Child intends to not only support projects directly, but we also want to actualise our goals indirectly through investments and thus to contribute to a sustainable and healthy life on this planet.

New projects this year

Already in the first half of 2021, Moving Child was very busy and got to know many new projects. We are proud to have found six new projects, which we will be supporting wholeheartedly in the coming years.

These projects include the AETAS Children’s Foundation in Munich, which has set itself the goal of caring for children and adolescents after a traumatic event and provides professional child crisis intervention. Their work is unique in Germany and goes far beyond emergency care. The Munich-based “initiative for children with cancer” supportst children and their relatives in this extremly difficult circumstances and relieves their burded through a variety of offers of assistance.

Our special support this year goes to the association Save the Children Deutschland. We support two projects that are particularly close to our hearts. The first is “Save back to school” in Yemen. The long-running state of war, the corona situation, as well as the destruction of many schools lead to the permanent school/education drop-out of many children in Yemen. “Safe back to school” plays a very special role here, as many parents keep their children at home because the route to school and the school themselves are too dangerous. Save the Children contacts the children, provides learning materials, and supports the return of the children to the schools. The second project is the “Corona Help” in India. Children are particularly affected by the consequences of the extremely high infection rates in May and June of this year in India. Many children are orphaned, relatives are afraid to visit and care for them. They are unprotected. The provision of food, hygiene, medication, and psychological and social assistance to children is often interrupted or not possible. Save the Children takes care of the much-needed medical and social care of children in India.

Biku and Jambo Bukoba are two associations in Munich that we started to support this year. Biku e.V. organizes free girls’ football training with an integrative approach for girls with and without a migrant background under the title “Mädchen an den Ball”. Jambo Bukoba e.V. is committed to equal opportunities, health, and education in Tanzania. Through self-designed sports units and by improving the sanitary conditions, girls and boys are given the opportunity to participate regularly and equally in everyday school life.

Our latest funding project is the Paulihof – Kinderhilfe gGmbH. The Paulihof is an educational-therapeutic living group for traumatized children and adolescents, which has its approach in education and experience with animals. The way the children and animals are treated and communicated with on this farm is very special and helps them to rediscover a feeling of protection, security, and trust and allows them to build relationships again.

Detailed information on these new projects can be found in our blog or will be published on our website soon.

Moving Child also provides active support

So far, the work of Moving Child has mainly been shaped by its financial support for projects. On its 10th anniversary, Moving Child can already look back on 32 funded projects. This year Moving Child will be operationally active on a larger scale for the first time. The “Feldenkrais in Schools” project is a project initiated directly by Moving Child. This project is mainly inspired by and in collaboration with an Israeli project that Moving Child has supported financially for several years. The project in Israel is led by Dr. Eilat Almagor (Feldenkrais teacher and neuroscientist) and has been successfully implemented since 2015.

The Feldenkrais method, named after its founder, the physicist Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais is a body-oriented learning method that helps people learn to perceive themselves more consciously. The physical access of Feldenkrais can contribute to professional and social learning. Through the mostly unfamiliar movements, children learn to perceive themselves better and to find alternatives to their usual behaviour independently and in their own rhythm. From getting to know this new world in your own self, it is only one step to appreciate the otherness of friends and strangers. Feeling yourself without judgment helps to treat each other with respect and tolerance.

Our idea is to realize Feldenkrais ‘original vision of integration and to incorporate features of organic learning into school-based learning. We focus primarily on working with financially disadvantaged children, migrants, or children with learning difficulties. All students and teachers should become more fully present in class through the movement exercises and their learning process should be more meaningful and connected with their entire being.

Due to the pandemic, the start of the project was delayed, but Moving Child is happy to have found motivated, competent, and enthusiastic Feldenkrais teachers who are happy to initiate the project and breathe life into it. We are really looking forward to the start of the project and hope to be able to report on its progress soon.

We thank all projects, whether new or old, for the wonderful cooperation and all donors for their support! We send our best and wish you a good second half of 2021!

Sincerely, your Moving Child Team

Anna, Gertraud and Ella

 

June 2021 – Corona aid for India

In April and May 2021, the numbers of new corona cases in India have been devastating. The number of cases increased rapidly and within a week more than 1.5 million new infections were reported. In only one week in May, new infections in India accounted for nearly half of all cases recorded worldwide. It is assumed, however, that there was a significantly larger number of unreported cases of infections, which would be many times higher than the reported cases. This is especially assumed as the virus spread quickly from the cities to the countryside, where testing was often not possible.

The health system in India was not able to handle such numbers and was on the verge of collapse. One no longer knew how to proceed with the dead. India was and still is lacking all the essentials: oxygen, vaccines, medicines, and hospital places. Children are particularly affected. Their parents and relatives are dying or sick. Contact persons are afraid to visit them. They are helpless. Supplying the children with food, hygiene products, medication, and psychological and social help is often not possible.

Moving Child campaigns for India and donates the exceptional sum of € 300,000 for Corona emergency aid in India. We support the work of Save the Children Deutschland e.V., who are working on site. We hope that with enough solidary global support the situation in India and thus in the world will quickly take a turn for the better.