September 2016
fromthestreets
Right to childhood The green bag has had a huge part to play in the lives of children all over Brazil for more than 15 years. The largest country in South America, Brazil has made significant progress in human rights, but despite this the situation is far from ideal. Young people are facing numerous hardships that are preventing them from growing up in a stable and peaceful environment. Child labour has still not been completely eradicated, with children being employed on sugarcane plantations, in coal mines and as fishermen. An estimated 400,000 children are employed as domestic workers. Sexual exploitation is a big issue too – rape and prostitution are widespread and remain a major problem for Brazil.
Pavement Project
Recognising injustice SGM Lifewords Pavement Project Director, Clenir dos Santos, recently attended the 10th National Children’s Rights Conference in Brazil. She was there with 7,000 other delegates where the aim was to discuss, promote, protect and defend the rights of children. The conference recognised that regardless of social class, geographic region, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, all young people have the right to participate in their families, schools, communities and states, and gave them a platform to express their feelings in a safe environment. ➤
Pavement Project is a unique Bible-based counselling process that equips children-at-risk workers all over the world to raise children’s self-worth and restore a sense of hope for the future.
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Some of the children sharing their work with the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff
“Everything we organised for the event went really well,” explains Clenir. “The children joined us for three days of workshops. It was amazing to see God working and breaking down barriers. We decorated the room to make it interactive and playful. The children really connected with the layout and showed a huge desire and ability to learn and contribute. They shared their feelings about being excluded, being treated unfairly, about prejudice and their experiences of violence – Verdie’s cube helped a lot with this. “As the young people played they were able to reflect on their rights and responsibilities. We focused on the right of participation too; the right to be heard and to be taken seriously. The children shared their opinions about what qualities, skills, strengths and capabilities they already have which can be used to help them communicate to senior figures. They then had the
Clenir leading a workshop
opportunity to share their message with the chair of the National Council of Children’s Rights – a really triumphant moment! “The whole event built a real sense of community, and the proposals the children submitted were accepted into the national policy – a truly remarkable achievement. This was the first time that children were allowed to have such a significant role in a national conference and it was widely broadcast on national and regional radio stations, newspapers, magazines and social media”.
Who is Verdie? Verdie is the Pavement Project mascot. Based on the green bag itself, Verdie’s cube is used to help children identify different feelings and in turn express their own. It can be used in groups as part of a game or in a one-to-one session. Each side of the cube shows Verdie with a different expression, and the children use the resource to best sum up how they’re feeling. Clenir dos Santos explains: “They love it and find it so much easier to express themselves with the cube. Verdie is a real source of reassurance, it lets the kids know it’s ok to feel what they’re feeling”.
Please pray for the work of Pavement Project in Brazil, that those involved with the National Children’s Rights Conference will take on board what the children had to say, and that real action will be taken to improve their quality of life and safety.
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Under pressure Exams have been causing worrying levels of depression and anxiety in students worldwide over the past few years. Students in India are being referred to hospital units in shocking numbers for school related distress – exhibiting symptoms of depression, high anxiety, irritability and weeping spells. In fact, because of academic stress it is estimated that six students commit suicide every day in India. Reena is a 16-year-old girl who is all too familiar with the pressures of exams. Constantly being compared to her older sister by her parents, they were physically and verbally abusive
when she did not achieve the results they wanted for her – even going to the extent of saying it would be better if she died. Every day became a terror-filled struggle until finally she reached breaking point. She decided to take her own life.
Melting away Fortunately, a Pavement Project worker was introduced to Reena through her school before it was too late. During their first encounter Reena spent much of the time crying uncontrollably. She explained that she had always felt alone because of the favour her parents gave her older sister. During the green bag counselling session she compared herself to a candle melting away. As the sessions continued, Reena responded to the Bible stories and started to feel valued for the first time in a very long time. She said, “I was in darkness when I first met you. But now I am slowly coming into the light.” At the end of the session she compared herself to a baby, slowly trying to walk in God’s light and discovering the wonder of his love. The worker has since been able to reconcile Reena with her parents, and they are beginning to show her support. Please pray for complete restoration in their relationship.
Reena before heading into her green bag counselling session
Posed by model
We are always looking for new organisations to help us bring the Bible’s life words to childrenat-risk around the world. Please pray for SGM Lifewords work with existing partners, and for new partnerships to be made, so that we can reach even more young people.
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Bringing hope to 75,000 children every year with the green bag
Children living in a slum in Hyderabad, Telangana
In India 60 million children under the age of six live below the poverty line, with around 800,000 estimated to be living on the streets. Conditions are far from child-friendly, but shockingly living conditions are sometimes better on the streets than at home. It’s no surprise then that India has the largest population of street children in the world. Estimates show that as many as 126 million children in India are child labourers. They often end up in hazardous jobs in factories and construction sites where they are exploited by employers who abuse them and pay low wages. Many children also end up rag picking, selling newspapers and flowers on traffic signals, and some even engage in stealing and drug dealing. SGM Lifewords Pavement Project will be teaming up with Compassion in India to include the green bag as part of their child protection programme. Each child in their 318 projects – totalling more than 75,000 children – will be counselled with the green bag at least once a year. All project staff will undergo training, with two members of staff from each of the projects being taught how to use the green bag. One of these trained staff will then go on to teach the rest of the staff from their project, so that eventually everyone will have the ability to council children using Pavement Project resources.
The partnership with Compassion will allow the green bag to reach more than 75,000 children Please pray for the work of SGM Lifewords in India, that this new partnership with Compassion will allow us to bring hope to many more children-at-risk.
Compassion is one of the world’s leading child development and child advocacy organisations. Working with the local church, they link a child living in poverty with a loving sponsor. Each sponsor gives their child access to education, health checks and the care of a local church. Compassion has been working to release Indian children from poverty for the past 47 years. Keep your eyes peeled for further information about SGM Lifewords’ partnership with Compassion later in the year.
All around the world, SGM Lifewords has been helping people share God’s Word for over 125 years, and we’re still doing it today. If you love it – share it! That’s our philosophy and we hope you’ll get involved, and share the Bible’s life words where you are. 26395 FromTheStreets September 2016 STG3.indd 1
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The green bag in the Middle East Clenir dos Santos recently met with a major mission organisation running a refugee programme in the Middle East, to talk about bringing the green bag to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. The humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is expanding to unprecedented proportions, and the greatest threats posed by the conflict and displacement are faced by children who have been forced to flee their homes, families, schools and friends. Millions of children have experienced the conflict, which has huge physical and psychological effects on them. Simply going to school for many is fraught with danger. One in four schools cannot be used because they have been damaged, destroyed, or are being used as shelters for the internally displaced or for military purposes. The lack of safe learning environments coupled with a number of other factors such as unsafe routes to and from school, discrimination, displacement, shortages of teachers and supplies, has meant that more than two million children are out of school and hundreds of thousands are at risk of dropping out. Clenir after completing the first stages of training with missionaries working in the middle east. For secutiry reasons their identities must remain anonymous, it seems they found a new use for the green bag!
This partnership is an amazing opportunity to bring hope to places that are in serious need of the light of Jesus. This organisation already have missionaries working with refugees across the Middle East, and they desperately need resources like the green bag to equip them when counselling children-at-risk.
What’s needed? Missionaries need to be trained and equipped with new green bags. One of the most effective training methods is the trainers’ DVD, which can be used to teach new Pavement Project workers how to use the green bag. The missionaries are already right where they need to be, but the DVD needs to be translated or dubbed into Arabic. Without this and other training resources we are limited in the amount of workers that can be trained. The green bag also needs to be produced in Arabic to be used in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. Any gift you are able to make will help us bring Pavement Project to these children who so desperately need to hear about God’s love, especially those who are living amidst the destruction and continuing conflict across the Middle East. *© European Union 2016 – European Parliament
Life in one of the many refugee camps in the middle east*
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Pavement Project is an initiative of the SGM Lifewords global family of organisations, working hand-in-hand with people and communities-in-need to help them share the Bible in a one-to-one way. Charity No. 219055. Registered in the UK.
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