Child Care
The official 2008 estimate from UNICEF (based on 2007 data) is that there are 145 million orphans in the world.
We at Travel to Teach are shocked by this fact and are continually trying to expand our programmes to include child care and to work at more orphanages around the developing world.
According to UNICEF in El Salvador 1 in 10 children are abandoned or orphaned. In Santa Tecla we work with a Catholic run orphanage where we help the children with their homework, play games with them, and try to enrich their lives. Many of the children at the orphanage in Santa Tecla have lost their parents and family members in horrific ways. The children at the orphanage are prone to social development and behavioural problems including difficulties with connecting with other students and peers and/or expressing their feelings. A sure way to help develop these skills is purely by playing games with them such as football, basketball, jump-rope or other fun activities such as singing songs and painting.
In Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu we work in partnership with four child care homes/orphanages. These homes house between 12 and 60 children at any one time. Most of the children at these childcare homes are orphans, however some have been placed there due to their parents not being able to afford food to feed them or because they are from very poor landless families and have been rescued from child labour.
In the small city of Pokhara in Nepal we work in partnership with The Children’s Welfare Home. This home currently houses 32 children aged between 7 and 18 years old, all of whom are parentless. Our volunteers who choose to work here help out with the day-to-day duties of running the home along with helping the children with their homework, playing games and also help educate the children on health and hygiene issues.
According to the UNICEF 2010 website more than 50,000 children die in Nepal each year, with malnutrition as the predominant cause for more than 60 per cent of these deaths. Without the Orphanages and Childcare Homes this staggering number may double.