Photo: Children demonstrate their dance skills - learnt through a CCC project – at a carnival in Quibdó, western Colombia
The funds we raised thanks to Radio 4 listeners’ generosity are helping us to provide thousands of at risk children with safe spaces where they can play, learn and heal from trauma.”
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who so generously donated towards our appeal! With your help we raised £12,685, which will have a big impact on our work with Colombia’s most at risk children and young people.
Across Colombia, children face risks and injustices that lead to them feeling unprotected at home and insecure in their community. Four in ten have suffered physical, psychological or sexual abuse, with three quarters of these incidents occurring at home. The story of 12-year-old Carlos, which featured in our appeal, showed how feelings of loneliness and fear can lead children to believe that armed groups and other exploitative adults offer physical and emotional security.
The funds raised through the appeal are helping us to support children across Colombia to come to terms with past traumas, learn to build positive relationships with their loved ones, and begin creating a happy, fulfilling future for themselves. We strongly believe in children’s right to voice their opinions and be taken seriously. And we have seen that when given the chance, they can be a powerful force for change. So, we are also teaching children the skills and knowledge they need in order to demand the protection they are entitled to.
In recent weeks, children at one of our projects started working with their school governors to come up with plans for how the school can better protect students’ rights, for instance sex education to tackle the high rate of teenage pregnancies. In another project, children have been running campaigns promoting the safe use of social media, to help their peers to protect themselves from being groomed online. These are just two examples of the changes that children and young people have set in motion since our appeal. In the coming weeks and months, we will be supporting them to make many more changes in their own lives and the lives of others!
If you would like to read more about our work, please visit our .