Month: December 2015

Happy Christmas everyone!

Here is the second part of the Christmas quiz.  You should have your answers from yesterday’s episode already, and when you’ve finished this section you’ll be able to check the answers and send me your overall score to win the valuable first prize! *

Thank you again for your interest in my blog over the last couple of months. I hope you’ll keep up with it in 2016 as I update it on the follow up to the visit.

I hope you enjoy finishing the quiz!

* To win the prize send your score to andyrhalliwell@gmail.com

The India Christmas Quiz – part 2

11) What was the worst of Richard’s puns on his blogs?

a) A Stonking Day (after a visit to Tonk)
b) Slum dog will in the air
c) Hard to say – they were all as bad as each other!

12) What does Sheila not do?

a) Play in a local orchestra
b) Work in a parenting assessment centre
c) Relax quietly while waiting for her baggage to arrive

13) How many children are reported to be sent away from the Dungarpur region to work (illegally) in the cotton fields of Gujarat every year?

a) 400
b) 4,000
c) 40,000

14) One of the most moving symbols of child suffering that we saw was the cradle installed outside the hospital in Udaipur. It means that rather than being literally thrown away, rejected babies can be offered the care they need to survive.

At the time we visited how many times had it been used in the last 8 years?

a) 25
b) 48
c) 129

15) How many official slums are there in Delhi?

a) 68
b) 450
c) 628

16) Which of these is not true?

a) The population of Delhi is increasing by 700,000 people each year
b) A quarter of Delhi households have no water supply
c) More people are killed on India’s roads each year than young children who die of diarrhoea

17) What is chai?

a) A spicy milk tea
b) A mixture of hot chocolate and coffee
c) The Indian equivalent of Pepsi

18) We loved the chance to interact with groups of children who had benefited from the Save the Children programmes. What was the best question (IMHO) that we heard?

a) Why have you come to India?
b) Can you help raise more money to support us?
c) Will you play with us?

19) What was the score in the children vs Save the Children Supporters steal the handkerchief game?

a) Children 5 Supporters 2 ( Home advantage told)
b) Children 5 Supporters 5 (They were kind and didn’t want to hurt our feelings!)
c) Children 0 Supporters 2 (Supporters’ innate competitive instincts came through)

20) How much of every £1 raised by Save the Children goes directly to support children

a) 88p
b) 75p
c) 61p

I’ve enjoyed this quiz so much I want to donate to Save the Children! How can I do it?

a) through this link Save the Children – India visit
b) buying a last-minute e-gift for someone on the Save the Children website Christmas gifts
c) a cash donation on the Save the Children web site (Save the Children )
d) all of the above

Thanks, and good luck!

You might remember that as we left our hosts for the last 3 days of the trip, Hemant and UP, were heading back to Jaipur to be part of the Race for Survival.  The event was a great success – five thousand children of all ages took part in the race, spreading the message on gender equality. They ran with orange balloons to make the pink city orange for the day,  and to send out a message “End Violence against Women”.  I’m sure you’ll appreciate from many recent news stories how important it is for India to address the problem of violence against women, so it was gratifying for us to see how gender equality was a keystone in all the Save the Children projects we visited.

A colourful day…..

I’m sure everyone will be a winner from events like these, but these few went home with the medals…

Yesterday Hemant sent us through some photos that he had taken while he was showing us the Save the Children Rajasthan projects.  You can see that we have to add photography to the long list of his talents!   I’ve included many of the photos in a short photomontage that I’ve put together to help me remember what we saw during our visit.  You can see that if you click on this link

7 minute photo montage

I hope that you enjoy it even half as much as I did putting it together!

Yesterday I shared Terry’s heart-felt thoughts as he returned home, but there is another aspect of the visit that I would like to say something about – something that struck me increasingly as the week went on, and that is of fundamental importance for us as donors. How good a job are Save the Children doing with our donations?

As we travelled with them I was more and more impressed by the Save the Children team and the work that are doing. I had expected to see dedicated people and I was not disappointed. I also expected to see people who cared deeply about what they are doing, and we found that in spades. And I had expected to see people who were good at their job, but what I hadn’t expected to see was such a competent and professional organisation, one that stands up to  comparison with any of the organisations that I have worked for.

Their approach to strategy was clear and disciplined, helping them figure out what were the most important things for them to be working on, and then they go on to do what’s needed.  They are very good at building the networks they need to make change – working with communities, government and other NGO’s.   And they are not frightened to take on really difficult projects –   in the past I’ve been involved in trying to effect change in large organisations and know how difficult that is,  but they are trying to change attitudes and behaviours in major populations.

The people we spent  most time with were Sanjib and Shamaila in Delhi, Hermant, O.P. and Sanjay in Jaipur, Jaswinder in Tonk and Nima in Dungarpur. Thank you all so much for your wonderful work and for taking the time to show us what you do. Thanks too to all the others who were involved in the trip, too many to mention here.

Sanjib and Shamaila at work

And of course a big thank you to Jenny and Kris, who did such a wonderful job organising the whole visit, and kept us on track throughout.

The bottom line for me is that I came back convinced that this is a good effective organisation to support in the fight for the world’s children. I hope you agree. If you do, please consider making a donation to them, either case or making a commitment to leave a donation in your will. You can do that on their website through this link Save the Children

Now I’m back home and reflecting on what has been a memorable week. I will long remember the amazing Save the Children team in India, the many wonderful children and families we met, the projects that we saw, and the new friends I’ve made with the wonderful people on the supporters team who travelled there with me.

I had thought that today I would write something to summarise the week, and then yesterday I read my new friend Terry’s blog. He has written so beautifully about his reactions that straight away I wanted to share it. I agree with everything he has written…..

Save the Children do some great work and we have seen some wonderful projects over the last week. They make a real difference to the life chances of some very deprived and vulnerable children and I felt very proud at times to, literally, ‘wear the shirt’. Despite the fantastic work that Save the Children do many of the children’s circumstances that we met were pretty grim. You can’t put a gloss on living in a slum where the average space per family is little more than 6ft by 6ft and knowing your rights means very little if those rights are not realised. I still fear that many of the girls will be mums long before they are out of their teens and the boys will have to leave school too in order to become daily wage labourers. I wouldn’t want my children growing up in those circumstances and neither would you. So the work of Save the Children remains as needed and as vital as ever. But it would be wrong to portray the children we met solely as victims. They are resilient and optimistic for their futures. They knew how to play, laugh and have fun and they certainly didn’t seek out sympathy or charity. I will not forget them. They confirmed my view that whatever their nationality, culture , religion or anything else you can throw in the mix , childhood  has a universal commonality and the children in the slums of Delhi or the deprived rural areas of Rajasthan will have more in common with my children and your children than they will have differences. I also believe that it’s up to the adults of the world to defend (vigorously) that notion of childhood.

So, with apologies for the cliché … my journey to India with Save the Children is over. But for the children I feel privileged to have met and with whom, if only briefly, our lives met and connected, their journey of life is only just beginning. I hope that they get the chance to fulfil their undoubted potential. To them I say thank you for being pivotal in one of the most significant weeks of my life. Take care, good luck on your journey, and travel well.

Thank you Terry. I can’t think of a better summary of what we experienced  last week.