Save the children ... but for what?

Press, 20 December 1985, Page 18

Save the children .. . but for what?

By

KEN COATES

“Dear sponsor, please help. I live with my father and brothers and sisters and two other families in one shelter. My father pushes a handcart, and earns $5 a week. It is not enough for me to go to school, but if I cannot learn I will never get work Please help.” Signed, “Shernaz, aged 9.” This letter happens to be from a child in India. It could just as easily be from a wretchedly poor nine-year-old in an African country, in South-east Asia, or in nearby Fiji.

It is used to evoke a response to an appeal by the Save the Children Fund, the world-wide charity well known for feeding and aiding suffering children. New Zealanders of all ages respond magnificently. Families, individuals, children, clubs, busi-. ness groups, churches, and pensioners reach into their pockets for regular sums.

They become sponsors, paying for deprived children from poor homes in developing countries to get schooling. More than 4000 children around the world are being helped by Kiwis to attend school, at a cost of $756,000 a year. The country that benefits most from this scheme is Fiji, our nearest Pacific island neighbour. There, 750 youngsters go to school because New Zealanders send regular payments, totalling $117,000 a year. “Sponsorship is used,” states the fund’s publicity, "where the child has both the interest and ability to learn the skills necessary to become self-supporting and a productive member of his community and country.” Unfortunately, the realities of life in an economically depressed country like Fiji mean that giving a child an education does not necessarily change its life. The sad

fact is that at the end of their schooling, many cannot get jobs.

Save the Children, with the best of motives, is setting out to save some children from wandering the streets in idleness, but is saving them for what?

The charity’s Fiji sponsorship secretary, Jackie Powell, says that 80 per cent of 894 children sent to school under the scheme are financed from New Zealand.

Most are from destitute, oneparent families who cannot afford schooling in a country in which education is not compulsory, and which provides negligible welfare benefits. Then, after having their

expectations raised, many of these children run into disappointment because there are no jobs for them after they leave school.

Mrs Powell does not accept children from Fijian villages in the interior or outlying islands because, as she puts it tactfully, they are not ready for higher education. Save the Children’s headquarters are in London, to which a record $2.3 million was sent from New Zealand last year. This helped fund various projects, including emergency relief. From London, 27,000 sponsorships are administered in 28 countries. Mrs Powell has sent a letter to London officials urging that trade training for sponsored children in Fiji be considered. “They are thinking about it; like ■us, and like New Zealand sponsors, they are concerned about the frustration of helping children with education, only to find in many cases there are no jobs,” she says. Fiji’s Minister of Education is keen to establish multi-craft schools, and some trade apprenticeship training exists, like Boys’ Town, near Suva, but spaces are limited.

The American-based organisation, Save the Children, does establish craft and trade training, and Mrs Powell sees advantages in the two charities working more closely. The sponsorship secretary in New Zealand, Cecily Maccoll, says children are kept at school as long as they can cope, and at least are kept off the streets. She outlines stumbling blocks for children in Fiji schools, including problems over getting into repeat classes for examinations at several

levels, including School Certificate. Sponsors are often disappointed at the short time the children they are helping stay at school, she says. “But it is desirable to give children the opportunity, and preferable for them to be learning something, at least becoming literate.” Lack of jobs causes concern to sponsors, but there is little the organisation can do, she adds. “The same thing happens in Kenya where children can get to British A level standard, but then cannot find employment.” Many children return to communities within a 40-mile radius of towns and at least they can bargain, and read and write, to help their families. Others get work with relatives on outlying islands who are prepared to take them because of their schooling. Equal numbers of Fijian and Indian children are sponsored. Indians are better achievers in examinations, says Mrs Maccoll. Fijian children are not encouraged to the same extent by their parents, and few have facilities for study at home. Those who do persevere do themselves and their parents credit. The organisation has its success stories with sponsored children from Fiji who have passed School Certificate and University Entrance examinations, and gone to university, but these are few. Save the Children’s charter says that a sponsored child must receive a training which will enable it, at the right time, to earn a livelihood. In many cases this means a need for trade and craft training. Thirty per cent of funds raised in New Zealand go to sponsorships. In Fiji, Save the Children has also helped provide extensions to a crippled children’s hostel and treatment of children with cerebral palsy.