October 2022 – AETAS Children’s Foundation

With this blog entry we want to focus on a special, Munich-based enterprise and the foundation that arose from it: AETAS.

AETAS has been a funeral home with a very special approach for over 20 years. At AETAS funerals are treated and conducted with great sensitivity: bright, open rooms offer a safe and tranquil environment in which it is easy to say goodbye peacefully. The support of the AETAS team is a strong anchor in a difficult process, which helps to gather strength and find comfort in this difficult time. AETAS is special with their focus on a life-affirming feeling, which is expressed in one of its themes: “life culture”. AETAS also offers a wide range of events that are not only aimed at mourners and, amongst other topics, deal with death and farewells in a variety of ways. BUT AETAS is much more than a funeral home.

Over many years grew, from the daily contact with the bereaved, the need to do even more for the mourners in these extraordinary hard and straining situations. Further support should be offered especially for grieving and traumatized children and parents. This support is now offered by the AETAS Children’s Foundation. Since 2013, the non-profit trust foundation has been managed on a voluntary basis by founder Florian Rauch, with Tita Kern and Simon Finkeldei taking on the practical management of the foundation.

The AETAS Children’s Foundation has set itself the goal of caring for children and young people after a drastic, traumatic event. The foundation provides professional child crisis intervention and their work, which to date is unique in Germany, goes far beyond initial care. Their concept of early intervention (i.e., “Aufsuchende Psychosozial-Systemischen Notfallversorgung”, which translates approximately to “Visiting Psychosocial-Systemic Emergency Care”) is the basis of the trauma therapy work of the AETAS specialists. Children between the ages of 0 and 17 and their caregivers can take advantage of the offers of the AETAS Children’s Foundation. Acute counseling (shortly after the incident), regular counseling (up to 1 year after the incident) and group activities (such as climbing, creative weekends, festival of lights) are offered. The AETAS Children’s Foundation is unique in that it closes the gap between first aid (emergency care) and care that is necessary in the event of possible illness as a result of the trauma. The AETAS Children’s Foundation accompanies and counsels preventively if no “disease” has been diagnosed (yet) but a traumatic event has occurred. Moving Child has been supporting the ATEAS Children’s Foundation since 2021, among other things with the financial means for personnel, material costs, and private tuition.

“The funding from Moving Child has not only supported our work with the affected children and their relatives in a variety of ways, but in many ways made it possible in the first place due to the amount. With this help, we can meet a need for help that would otherwise go unaided.

The support provided by Moving Child is currently one of the most effective forms of support for the AETAS Children’s Foundation.”

– Annual Report 2021/22 of the AETAS Children’s Foundation

September 2022 – Moving Child supports Save the Children

In 1919 Save the Children International (SCI) was founded in Great Britain by the teacher and social reformer Eglantyne Jebb and has since worked with 25,000 employees worldwide for the rights and protection of children. The German branch of the organization Save the Children Deutschland e.V. (SCDE) was created in 2004. Last year, Moving Child supported the SCDE in two of its projects.

The first project, “Save back to school” project in Yemen (see also our blog post from last year), was especially significant for Moving Child. Save the Children has been working in Yemen since 1963. The prolonged state of war, the destruction of many schools and school closures due to the pandemic lead to many children in Yemen dropping out of school and education in general. The “Safe back to school” program is especially important here as many parents keep their children at home because the way to school and everyday school life are too dangerous. Save the Children establishes contact with the children, distributes learning materials for home-schooling, and supports the children’s return to school.

In concrete terms, we supported Save the Children in rehabilitating five particularly badly damaged schools in the Lahj governorate so that the children there can learn safely. The buildings are now connected to the nearest water source, and boys, girls, and children with disabilities each have their own latrines, basins for washing and drinking water. Classrooms were also renovated, some were newly built, and even have solar-powered lighting and fans.

In all these classrooms in Al Qabbitah and Torelbah districts, which are in particularly hard-to-reach areas of Lahj, children can now learn again. Schoolchildren are taught here in mixed classes, among other things, in writing and reading. Since there are different levels of knowledge and a mixed age structure in these classes, the children are also encouraged individually. The aim is to prepare them for formal education in state schools. And not only that: the children also have the opportunity to stay at school after class to do their homework and play with others. More than 300 children can exercise their right to education here and get a chance for a better future.

The second project that Moving Child supported was the Corona emergency aid in India (see also our blog post from last year). As part of this project, we supported children who were affected by the consequences of the extremely high number of Corona infections in May and June 2021. Many are orphaned and vulnerable. The supply of the children with food, hygiene products, medicines, and psychological and social help is often interrupted or not possible at all. Among other things, Save the Children took care of the urgently needed medical and social care for the children in India.

As part of this project, Save the Children India worked in the four states of Assam, Odisha, Delhi, and Rajasthan. Together with the government, Save the Children teams and local partnerships were able to provide important support. Almost 160,000 children were reached as part of this mission. Among other things, childcare facilities received food packages, medicines, hygiene sets, protective masks, corona tests, and other information material. There was psychosocial first aid and individual counselling for children, relatives, and people with children in custody. In addition, orphans and vulnerable families were supported in taking advantage of other state protection programs and support systems. There was an information campaign for the population including murals, posters, and flyers on adequate corona protection measures such as washing hands and information on corona vaccination.

Moving Child is touched and excited to see how many people have been reached and supported through the work of Save the Children and the shapes these joint efforts have taken. This year, Moving Child is also committed to the Save the Children project “Emergency aid for children from Ukraine“.

August 2022 – Moving Child receives award

Moving Child receives an award for long-standing social commitment

This summer, Moving Child received a special honour. The organisation “Friends Without A Border” (FWAB) honoured Moving Child foundress and managing directors Anna Schulz-Dornburg and Gertraud Leimstättner for their decades of commitment and dedication to children in need and especially for their support of the Lao Friends Hospital for Children (LFHC) in Luang Prabang.

As part of the 2nd International Virtual Gala of the FWAB, Ms. Schulz-Dornburg and Ms. Leimstättner received this beautiful award for their long-standing and dedicated commitment to supporting financially and socially disadvantaged children all over the world.

Moving Child was founded in 2010 with the aim of supporting babies, children and adolescents who lack access to important resources such as basic health care, school education and training or creative and body work. Since the start of the foundation, more than 30 projects have been funded by Moving Child. These include exciting and diverse projects such as the support of orphans in Nepal (Hands with Hands e.V.), the trauma workshop of an international Montessori school (Campus di Monaco) and supporting the Child-Life Specialists (Care-For-Rare Foundation) in Munich.

After two long years, Moving Child was finally able to visit the Lao Friends Hospital for Children in Laos in person this spring. Despite the extreme stress caused by the Corona Pandemic, the hospital has developed wonderfully. The medical training program was continued partly digitally and partly in person during this difficult time. This way the program stayed focused on the development of the independence of the Laotian doctors. Managing directors Schulz-Dornburg and Leimstättner were also able to get to know the new hospital director personally and experience the exciting developments at the hospital first hand.

“The distinguishing feature of Moving Child is the close and very personal contact with the people and projects they support. FWAB can attest to this. Anna and Gertraud wandered into the Lao Friends Hospital for Children’s Visitor Center in early 2017 and have been so connected to both the hospital and Luang Prabang since that time. They have funded our thalassemia clinic, our neonatal clinic and funded our first four-year educational training program for paediatricians. They have thrown a fundraiser for the hospital and always provide support in any way they can. Moving Child is a very important part of the Lao Friends Hospital for Children. We are delighted to celebrate them.

All the great work at LFHC is not possible without generous support from you! We sincerely thank you.”

– Nicole Pagourgis (Executive Director FWAB)

On May 19th the award was presented by Kenro Izu, the founder of FWAB, at the Virtual Gala. The event was a great success, and a lot of donations were raised for the children’s hospital. A video of the evening can be found following this LINK. The Moving Child tribute is at time stamp 1:24:00 – 1:28:20.

If you would like to donate, you may do so directly at www.FWAB.org/donate.