New Internationalist: Brides To Be

Bethlehem Tsegey, 14, smiles brightly as she describes her relief to be back at school. Since Beati Akor Primary School reopened in the Eastern Zone of the North Ethiopian region of Tigray, not all the girls have returned. Two years of war and the region’s worst drought for 40 years killed around 600,000 people and plunged the rest into hunger and poverty. ‘A lot of 16-year-olds are engaged to be married nowadays,’ she says. ‘Some of them were students here at this school...'

Read the full story in the Sep/Oct 2024 issue of the New Internationalist. 

Devex: School meals in Tigray are a lifeline. Why are so few offering them?

Abraha Bahlbi lays an enormous paper ledger over bags of ready-to-eat Famix blended food in the storeroom at Ara Primary School in southeastern Tigray, Ethiopia. The Mary’s Meals International, or MMI, school feeding coordinator points to the columns and rows, and explains how cooks measure exactly 100 grams a day of the nutrition-fortified porridge for each student. The daily total distributed is deducted from the amount in stock, and the new balance used to calculate next month’s food delivery.

But what Bahlbi points to most furtively is the column showing school attendance. MMI began a school feeding program at Ara in March this year. By May, enrollment jumped from 380 to 453 children. “The daily attendance rate is about 98%,” he said. “It is a sign of the high need and importance the meal is playing that the children are coming every single day...”

Read the full story on Devex.com.

Also this related article: 

Sister-in-arms: Medhin Tesfay fights against hunger in Tigray

The Telegraph, Ukraine: The Latest: A listener’s efforts to fundraise for a bus for Ukrainian children

In this episode I report about how a listener got in touch with me asking how she could help children in Ukraine, and together we fundraised to buy a bus.

Listen here. 

The Telegraph, Ukraine: The Latest podcast: Ukrainian teenagers in Warsaw

In this episode I interview Ukrainian teenagers who have fled to Warsaw since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine.

We discussed studying abroad and adapting into Polish society more than two years since the start of the war.

I also report generally on how Ukrainian refugees are coping in Poland.

This piece marked World Refugee Day 2024.

Listen here. 

The Telegraph: Desperate hunger in Tigray pushes thousands into the hands of kidnappers and people smugglers

If he had finished his education, Aregawy Tekle Birham, 23, believes he never would have left Tigray. Sitting on a stone step outside his old primary school in the mountainside village of Gendefru, Northern Ethiopia, Aregawy regretfully recounts his decision to migrate.

“I couldn’t get a job here because I only studied to grade 4,” he says, tugging dry stalks of grass from the ground and snapping them. “This school didn’t teach any further, and it was too expensive to travel to another. I thought I would find work in Saudi Arabia. But when I reached the border, they imprisoned me for three years.”

The only unusual part of Aregawy’s story is that he came home...

Read the full story on The Telegraph.

Devex: Is online learning to blame for Ukraine’s educational decline?

 

Amid widespread concern that Ukraine’s online learners’ educational progress and personal development is at risk, the government and education organizations are working to improve online learning platforms and incentivize in person school attendance.

At least 1.5 million Ukrainian children have not entered a classroom since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to government figures. This represents just over a third of the school-aged population. For many reasons, including schools being bombed or lacking shelters, online learning is the only safe option. The rest of Ukraine’s pupils study in person or a blend of on- and offline. Yet, online learning appears to be having negative repercussions on the country’s educational attainment...

Read the full story on Devex.com. 

Nursery World: Is a decline in independent activity in early years causing poorer childhood mental health?

 

In the US, as in the UK, rates of anxiety and depression among school-age children are rising. 

One fifth of eight- to 25-year-olds had a probable mental disorder in 2023, according to NHS England. 

In US research, two psychologists and one anthropologist argue that while poor mental health in childhood is often blamed on increased use of digital technologies, or more pressure for high academic achievement, another cause is overlooked: a decline over decades in opportunities for children to “play, roam and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults”....

Read the full story on Nursery World.

This article was one of a six-part series of pieces looking at research that informs early childhood development approaches. 

Devex: Yes, there's a youth bulge, but the global south is also getting older

Henry Mbene in Nigeria receives food and health checks from NGOs. Luisa Pelamo in Argentina keeps active by volunteering in a local community center. An NGO taught Chandra Devi Kafle in Nepal how to use a mobile phone.

These people all have different lives in different environments, but upon reaching an older age, each of them has experienced life-changing challenges requiring additional support.

While development practitioners have given the so-called youth bulge much attention in recent years, particularly in Africa, less notice has been paid to the impact of improved global life expectancy...

Read the full story on Devex.com.

iNews: ‘I fear being shot every time I leave my house’: Inside Haiti’s violent reality

Every time Nixon Boumba steps out of his house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he anticipates being shot. “I know so many people, so many people who died or went to hospital because they got hit by a balle perdue [stray bullet],” he told i.

The social justice activist says the risk of being accidentally hit in crossfire or kidnapped by gangs that now control 80 per cent of the city means public spaces, supermarkets, banks, bars or restaurants – everywhere outside home – is dangerous. “We don’t know at any moment what could happen,” he said...

Read the full story on iNews.

Devex: How virtual reality takes donors to the heart of development causes

A potential donor at a charity event in London takes off his virtual reality headset. He blinks a few times as his eyes readjust to the light. The immersive film he just watched transported him to Somaliland in East Africa, where he stood in the shelter of a family driven from their home by drought. It was a patchwork of plastic sheets and textiles tethered down by ropes, in a windy, dusty plain.

“The roof was so fragile,” he says, reaching up as if he were still in the hut. “It all felt so real. I’ve traveled a lot in Africa, but this experience has brought it all home.”

VR technology has existed for decades. But as the VR market expands — it is projected to grow from $25.11 billion last year to $165.91 billion by 2030 — so too has its use in global development fundraising and awareness-raising. An August 2023 survey of more than 300 U.K. charities and nongovernmental organizations found that 58% had used VR, augmented reality, or online games to encourage donations in the past year...

Read the full story on: Devex.com

iNews: ‘They’ve forgotten who they are’: Race to save children abducted from Ukraine

Like hundreds of other abducted Ukrainian children, Denys Berezhnii believed what the Russian soldiers said. It was October 2022 and the Kremlin’s army had occupied his home city of Kherson. The bus outside the 16-year-old’s orphanage would take him to a camp for a short break in Russian-occupied Crimea. The soldiers did not mention that it was a one-way trip.

Mr Berezhnii finally left Russian soil this month. Almost a year and a half later, having turned 18, he contacted the charity Save Ukraine and asked them to get him out. The organisation has been at the forefront of rescuing forcibly deported or displaced Ukrainian children from Russia, of which there are more than 19,500 according to the Ukraine’s National Information Bureau. Only 388 have returned so far...

Read the full story on iNews.co.uk.

Devex - How the response to hunger crises has changed since Ethiopia's famine

Forty years ago, more than 400 television stations worldwide broadcast BBC news footage warning that 1 million people were starving to death in Ethiopia. It garnered a global response, including the famed Live Aid fundraising concerts in the United States and United Kingdom which raised more than $100 million.

But hunger remains a serious problem in Ethiopia, the Greater Horn of Africa, and elsewhere around the globe.

Last month, Save The Children UK and the Hungry for Action campaign screened a similarly cautionary film at an event in London about drought-devastated communities in Somaliland. This time, the message is starker: Since 1984, 18.3 million people have died globally from hunger, according to the alliance’s estimates. The organizers warned that the mainstream media is not reporting enough on the issue, nor are governments acting on it.

So what are the differences between the wider hunger crisis in East Africa today and the former in Ethiopia? And how can the global development sector encourage governments, the media, and the public to fund it and take action?...

Read the full story on Devex.com.

New Internationalist: Haiti - Saviour Or Failure?

Murders and kidnappings are the ‘daily lot’ of Haitians, according to UN-appointed Haitian human rights expert William O’Neill. As gangs fight for control of the Caribbean nation, life has become unbearable. 

Almost 200,000 Haitians have been forced from their homes by violence, while half the population don’t have enough food to eat. 

Haitians are desperate for safety and security – but the prospect of yet another foreign intervention, expected in January, has been met with apprehension...

Read the full story in the Jan/Feb 2024 issue of the New Internationalist. 

Telegraph: Strangling Putin’s legal system could bring about his downfall

For the second time, the State of Qatar has negotiated the repatriation of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. The country has become the go-to mediator in hostage crises too, having played a key role in brokering a deal between Israel and Hamas. But can Qatar also succeed, where others have failed, to help return thousands of Ukrainian hostages imprisoned in Russia?

As the world watches horrors unfold in Gaza and Israel, the plight of Ukrainian imprisoned civilians like Mykyta Buzynov have fallen from view. In March 2022, Russian soldiers took the 25-year-old taxi driver from his uncle’s yard in the Chernihiv region. Witnesses said occupying forces searched his phone, accused him of being a traitor, threatened to shoot his girlfriend, then drove him away. Months later, his family discovered he had been held in a pretrial centre in the Russian city of Belgorod. Now his location is unknown...

Read the full story on: telegraph.co.uk. 

Devex: Why a holistic approach is vital to tackling childhood malnutrition

Mam Nodanile lives in a so-called last-mile community in Nomadolo, South Africa. The grandmother cares for 12 grandchildren in a rondavel, a traditional one-bedroomed circular hut.

The parents of her grandchildren have all either died or left the remote homestead for the city. “I struggle to put together food, to feed them even simple porridge,” she told staff from charity One to One Africa, which is addressing cases of malnutrition among the family.

Since 2000, global cases of stunting and wasting — common measures of childhood malnutrition — have reduced. But jointly-researched data from UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank warns alarming rates among children aged under 5 still persist. Stunting affected an estimated 22.3% of children in this age group in 2022 — about 148 million. Wasting threatened the lives of an estimated 6.8% or 45 million.

But beyond the statistics, the reality is that tackling poor early childhood nutrition is highly complex — solving physical deficiencies alone does not address the extent of the problem…

Read the full story on Devex.

TVN Warner Bros Discovery and Tygodnik Powszechny

 

I gave an interview to Polish television channel TVN's Fakty Po Południu about how children in Ukraine are coping during the war, to mark the beginning of a new school year. 

I also spoke to Polish weekly magazine Tygodnik Powszechny about children, you can read the article online (with a subscription). 

"Jestem pod wrażeniem tego, jak dzieci są zmotywowane do nauki, nie pozwalają, aby wojna zmarnowała ich przyszłość." 

"I'm always amazed by how children are motivated to continue their studies, and do not allow the war to ruin their futures."

Freelancing For Journalists Podcast

 

I spoke on the Freelancing For Journalists podcast about my work covering how the war in Ukraine is impacting children's mental health and education.

This followed my receiving the Freelancing For Journalists 2023 Best Print Journalist Award. 

You can listed to the podcast here. 

Equal Times - Around the world cities are seeing the benefits of creating more space for children to play

 

Adriana Quiñones’ neighbourhood on the eastern side of Cali in Colombia, is a mass of irregular vertical housing blocks. Children’s play areas seldom appear among the exposed brick, flat roofs and concrete roads. But the main reason the 16 year old grew up afraid to play outside was the violence.

“My neighbourhood provoked a lot of fear,” she says in a video describing the impact of an initiative to improve the community for children. “Fear of going out and not knowing whether someone would shoot you.”

Read the full article on Equal Times.

iNews: Russian volunteers risking their safety to return kidnapped children to Ukraine

Before his country invaded Ukraine, Russian priest Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko volunteered in jails with Ukrainian political prisoners accused of pro-Ukrainian activism. Today his work focuses on a different kind of alleged detainee: Ukrainian children...

Read the full story on inews.co.uk.

My regular reporting on Ukraine for iNews is available on my author page. 

Telegraph Comment: Putin's forgotten victims deserve our support

Today, like every day, 16-year old Daria will learn online instead of attending her school

in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. She is undeterred by the fact lessons will likely be interrupted

by air raids. Last Friday, she sheltered in a corridor from 4am for the entire day after

Russia hurled at least 18 missiles in her direction. Alarms in her region have sounded

almost every day since. 

About 4.7 million children enrolled in education in Ukraine live like Daria. Power outages

dictate their schedules. Air raid alarms signal the end of lessons rather than school bells.

But who would know? Children’s new normal – a life of wartime disruption, fear and

trauma – is considered by too many as old news...

Read the full piece on Telegraph.co.uk.