Above: An earthquake survivor rests in a tent at a shelter in Pisco, Peru.
Why are Child Friendly Spaces so important?
Child Friendly Spaces are one of Save the Children’s key programmatic interventions to protect children from physical harm and psychosocial distress and to help them continue learning and developing both during and immediately after an emergency.
Child Friendly Spaces provide children with protected environments in which they participate in organized activities to play, socialize, learn, and express themselves as they rebuild their lives.
Child Friendly Spaces are focused on fostering children’s natural resiliency and coping mechanisms. By participating in arts and crafts, games, cooperative learning, team building activities, drama, sports, and structured educational lessons, children are helped to come to terms with their experiences.
Our emergency responses are becoming faster, more efficient and more effective. During 2008, Save the Children raised more than US$100 million for emergency assistance, allowing us to reach more than 3 million children and families caught up in emergencies.
We are world leaders in reuniting families separated in emergencies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have reunited 237 former child soldiers with their families.
Our largest emergency operation in 2008 was in Myanmar, for which we raised US$52 million. Cyclone Nargis affected 2.4 million people in the delta region, destroying agriculture and fishing industries along with homes and schools.Through our preparedness and coordinated action, we were able to reach a quarter of all affected children.
Much of our emergency work takes place before a crisis, and our extensive preparations and rapid response have helped save thousands of lives. In 12 disaster-prone countries, we have implemented programmes that involve communities, including children, to reduce disaster risk.
In Thailand, children from 60 communities have identified vulnerabilities in their local area to influence disaster preparedness. Child-led disaster risk reduction is being integrated into school curricula in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
In parallel with our acute response work, we continue to provide support to hundreds of thousands of people recovering from emergencies. We provide long-term support to communities in Bangladesh affected by Cyclone Sidr in 2007, for example, and provide ongoing assistance to Iraqis who have been forced into neighbouring countries because of the war.
Our focus in ongoing emergency operations is strengthening infrastructures and local capacity to foster sustainable recovery. Following multiple hurricanes in impoverished Haiti, for example, we are running cash transfer programmes so that families can buy livestock or set up small businesses.
We work with local governments and communities to support education so that today's children are equipped to be tomorrow's family providers and community leaders.
