Posts Tagged ‘ children ’

Food 4thought – what does child poverty mean to you?

4thought.tv is Channel 4’s daily moral and ethics opinion show and is on every day after the news. 4thought.tv states that it is about sharing diverse thoughts, ideas and points of view. Each week, a different theme is explored through short video clips covering a wide range of issues such as should faith schools be banned, does everyone have the right to a home , is your God a woman, what are the lessons of 9/11 and so forth. With each theme, seven different views or perspectives are showcased in order to stimulate discussion – there is a facility to comment on individual video clips.

There are opinions from every aspect of society, from the devoutly religious, or religious leaders (multi-denominational), to atheists, converts and people leading non-traditional lifestyles – as well as politicians and celebrities also.

If you are interested in taking part in their project and being filmed, you can contact them (http://www.4thought.tv/be-on-the-show) directly and be on the show. If there is a particular issue or topic you like to see 4thought explore, you can also contact them with your suggestions.

This week’s theme, posed to six children, was ‘What does child poverty mean to you?’. Meet Johnny, for example, a 12 year old Irish Traveller participant. At less then 2 minutes in length each, the clips are short and engaging.

The discussions in the comment sections underneath the videos are also interesting in themselves (to see how people are responding to the videos –  which is not always met with empathy).

Worst countries for sick children

A new report – health workers index – published by UK NGO Save the Children lists those countries worldwide in which it is most dangerous to be a sick child. No great surprises in the results; at the bottom lie Chad, Somalia, LAO PDR, Ethiopia and, unforgivably Nigeria. At the top – Switzerland, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Belarus.

The Health Workers Reach Index measures the availability as well as the use of health workers in 161 countries against two critical life-saving interventions for children – vaccines and skilled birth attendance. It shows that children living in the bottom 20 countries — which fall below the WHO minimum threshold of just over two health workers for every thousand people – are five times more likely to die than those further up the index.

Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, argues:

A child’s survival depends on where he or she is born in the world. No mother should have to watch helplessly as her child grows sick and dies, simply because there is no one trained to help.

World Leaders must tackle the health worker shortage and realise that failing to invest in health workers will cost lives. Even the poorest countries in Africa can make real progress if they stick to their pledge of investing 15% of their budgets in health.

See: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/docs/HealthWorkerIndexmain.pdf for more info.