Blog | World Vision International

Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 09:41 by Amanda Cupido

How to End Violence Against Children: The power of activism and faith

By Sarafina, 16, Ghana

I am a Young Leader and honourable speaker of the Child Parliament Club in my District. I am writing this blog on the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse and Universal Children’s Day to share with you all the work that we, child parliamentarians, are doing.

Our Child Parliament Club seeks to find problems affecting children and after identifying these problems, we...

Ending Violence Against Children: The importance of getting involved

By Nicoleta,16, Romania

Violence is a problem that we are used to facing; everywhere we look there is something bad happening but we can overcome it with kindness as long as we are involved in creating a better world.

I am part of the Children Consultative Committee from World Vision Romania, which is formed by children from all around the country that love to be involved and make changes. We contributed to the World Vision global campaign It...

Violence Online: How to put a stop to cyberbullying

By Suelv, 14, Albania

Being a child or a teenager can be pretty rough sometimes. Especially if you’re living in Albania, where children and teenagers are vulnerable, facing violence, abuse and bullying. As a group of children and teens from a small village near the coastal city of Vlora, we decided do some child protection activities and to dedicate our awareness campaigns to some of the most disturbing themes in our area: violence against children and cyber...

Girls, empowerment and identity

By Melissa, aged 17, Young Leader from Brazil

Given that Oct. 11th is International Day of the Girl, I would like to write about the relationship between three things that socially and culturally should go together but many times are not easily found: girls, empowerment and identity. Girls are born with diverse stigmas inherited from the most remote times. Society teaches us, the girls, to put ourselves in a subordinate position....

Actions to stop child marriage

By Agnes Kabonesa, youth activist, Uganda.

Child marriage has been and is still one of the most pressing issues affecting many girls in different communities and societies across the world. It is on the increase and there are threats from countries like Iraq to legalise it. Despite all the challenges, we can stop child marriage and this is only possible if we are able to do many things together to tackle the problem at a social,...

Child participation and protection are at the heart of our work

I have spent the last week in Bogota with 10 children and young people from across Latin America discussing the significance of children’s participation and the impact of violence against children, on their lives and those of their community and their societies more broadly. I am inspired by the way these children represented the views of over 2,000 children from 28 countries, making a series of clear recommendations to policy makers and international...

Escaping an unnamed country: Birth Certificates, more than a piece of paper

Worldwide, an estimated 230 million children lack birth registration, 135 million of whom are living in the Asia Pacific region. If these unidentified, unregistered children, all under age five, formed their own country, their population would fall between that of the size of Japan and Russia. The country might even have a flag, or symbols of statehood, but there would be no legal rights, few basic services and little security.

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Truth comes out from the children's mouth

Today, 65.3 million people are on the run in the world. It’s 65.3 million people labelled as “refugees” “migrants”, “internally displaced”, “stateless”, or “asylum seekers” on the run. Ultimately, it’s 65.3 million HUMANS that are running today. All are trying to save their lives and the lives of their loved ones with the hope that they might have a better, hopeful, dignifying and peaceful future. Nearly half of these 65.3 million humans are...

A heart for children

When children were asked what they wanted World Vision to do for them to improve their well-being, one of them said: ‘“Can you please tell our parents to put us back in their hearts?”

I don’t think that normal parents would willingly neglect their children. But how easy it is for families and communities to have children feel being left out, estranged or excluded.

In our communities, the stresses of poverty...

Child participation: it’s about the adults, too

A few weeks ago when I was coming out of a local restaurant, I heard a young child give his mother his thoughts on how she should handle a particular situation at the child’s school. Without missing a beat, the mother – clearly exasperated – yelled at her child, “I’m a grown up. I do not need your input!” My heart fell.

By now, much of the development community has grown to understand that “child participation” is about ensuring...