Church leaders in Kenya give qualified support for plan to close orphanages
Nairobi, Kenya RNS Amid a growing push among child welfare organisations to reunite families rather than keep children in institutional homes, Kenyan authorities are set to adopt a new national program that will phase out traditional orphanages over the next decade. Church leaders in the country, whose denominations run hundreds of orphanages, have expressed support […]
From the Field: Why an organisation founded to care for orphans no longer has a children’s home
VAUGHAN STANNARD, director of collaboration at Beautiful Gate South Africa, said the organisation’s aim now is to strengthen families to raise thriving children…
Relocated children: Posterchild for Russia’s removal of Ukraine orphans says he was coached, threatened
POLINA NIKOLSKAYA and MARI SAITO, of Reuters, report…
“Bring them back”: Ukrainian orphans demand return of children in Russia
The Hague, The NetherlandsReuters Ukrainian orphans Ivan and Maksym, 17 and 16, escaped shelling and hunger in besieged Mariupol only to be captured and taken to the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk where they were held incommunicado for months with dozens of other children. They are now among about 400 Ukrainian children to have returned from […]
Ukrainian orphans taste freedom after fleeing Russian occupation
Kyiv, UkraineReuters There it was, on a terrace behind a Kyiv cafe. A ping pong table. After nearly a year and a half locked away in hiding under Russian occupation, followed by a daring escape last month, Ilona Pavliuk, 16, could hardly believe it was OK to just stop and play. “People are so nice […]
COVID aftermath: Orphans face grief and poverty as world moves on
LIN TAYLOR, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports that while the global health emergency is over but the crisis has left behind millions of orphaned children, many in urgent need of help…
Children evacuated from orphanage where dozens died in Sudan’s capital
Cairo, EgyptReuters About 300 children have been evacuated from an orphanage in Sudan’s capital Khartoum where dozens of orphans were found last month to have died since mid-April due to nearby fighting between rival military factions. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which facilitated the evacuation late on Wednesday, said the children aged between […]
India to provide scholarships, counselling to those orphaned by COVID-19
Mumbai, IndiaReuters India’s Federal Government will provide educational scholarships, mental health counselling and health insurance to children who have been orphaned by the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday. “For those who have lost a loved one to coronavirus, the change it has brought to their lives is so difficult,” Modi said […]
For children who lost a parent, the pandemic pain will never end
Converse, Texas, USReuters Aidan Garza often talks about his dad in the present tense, as if David Garza were still right across the living room, sitting in his favourite chair, calling the 12-year-old over to watch a Star Wars series. As if he had never collapsed while out running errands on 30th December, 2020, in […]
Feared and forgotten: Congo’s Ebola orphans work to survive
KAHINDO SIFA BAHATI, writing for Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how hundreds of children orphaned by Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been driven to work amid trauma, discrimination and fear around the disease…