Take Action
Educate
1. Organise a cultural or educational event: Organize an educational or a cultural event together with young people in your local community. These activities can include writing essays, sports, dance, performing or expressive arts, music, games, drama, watching a film, or any suitable event to raise awareness about child poverty and actions to overcome it. Partner with children or youth organisations such as religious groups, children’s homes, sports clubs, scouts and peace clubs, in order to host this event.
2 Involve your school: Partner with the school(s) in your community to organise and host an awareness activity around our ECP@10 campaign message, Together To End Child Poverty
- Invite students, teachers and parents to take part in your event.
- In this school activity, provide a platform for children to speak about how communities can end child poverty and violence against children.
- Remember to provide space for children to showcase their work in addressing child poverty.
Feed
Today, more vulnerable children are becoming malnourished due to the deteriorating quality of their diets and the multiple shocks created by the COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures. In 2020, UNICEF and its partners tipped that an additional 6.7 million children over the edge to become wasted during its first year, as a result of the pandemic. In the recent years, we have been mobilizing our partners including members of the GNRC to ensure that all children have access to safe, nutritious and adequate food, all year round. This way, key drivers and root causes of poverty, that is, hunger and malnutrition – can be effectively tackled. The programme is currently active in Colombia, Cuba, Kenya, Mexico and Peru.
In commemorating this 10th anniversary with us, you too can take action towards alleviating malnutrition in children:
- Donate food for 10 children or 10 schools for the school feeding programme or start a feeding programme for 10 vulnerable families.
- Invite faith leaders in your community to organise (intrafaith or interfaith) prayer for children affected by hunger.
- Write to your local leaders or government representatives about the state of children’s malnutrition & hunger in your community and ask them to take actions against child malnutrition.
- Organise community mapping to identify number of children are affected by malnutrition & hunger in your community.
- Join our social media campaign by sharing posts on social media with information and facts about tackling child malnutrition & hunger . You can use our media kit for some messages and visual elements on the same.
- Join us to mark the World Food Day on October 16th, and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17th, and use this to communicate about the need to end hunger and malnutrition in children.
- Donate $10 towards supporting our Meals-for-schools initiative; where we support our partners to provide nutritious school meals to children.
- Tell us what you’ll be doing to help feed children or Pledge any other action you aim to undertake your community. Post this in our ECP@10 Pledge and inspire others with your action as well.
- Tell your friends about the ECP@10 Campaign and the action(s) your taking. Invite them to join you as well.
communicate
1. Photo Contest: Take part in the annual End Child Poverty #SnapsforChange photography contest. Visit our IDEP page for more information
2. Tell Your Story : Share your story and let us know how your community is tackling child poverty, so that many others can get inspired.
- Tell us about your work to end child poverty in your community.
- Invite children and other young people in your community to share their story on what they are doing to end child poverty.
- You can share these stories through our Facebook and Instagram, write us an E-mail and Contact Us through our website.
- You can also share with us a brief report of your End Child Poverty activities through E-mail or through our website.
- Tell us what you have pledged for the ECP@10 Campaign have planned for the ECP@10 Campaign and send us photos of all your ECP@10 Campaign activities. Through the ECP@10 Map we shall share your story with the rest of the world.
3. Stay Connected: Be part of the End Child Poverty conversation on social media, through our website, newsletters, and by contacting us directly. We’re happy to hear from you
- Learn more about Arigatou International, our 4 initiatives, and and the work we do.
- Sign up to receive End Child Poverty newsletters
- Spread the word on social media by using your available spaces to communicate facts about child poverty, what communities can do to eradicate it. Share the message, “Together To End Child Poverty” and tag us through your social media. Use the hashtag #EndChildPovertyat10 and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our End Child Poverty website.
- Use the ECP@10 Facebook Cover photo and your Twitter Header photo, available in the Media Kit
- Invite your friends and followers to connect with End Child Poverty on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram
- Retweet, Share, Like and Comment on the End Child Poverty posts.
- You can use our ECP@10 Media Kit for more ideas.
4. Share Knowledge: Visit our Knowledge Centre for more resources on ending child poverty, and also contribute knowledge resources such as research papers, reports, policy briefs and other such content relevant to ending child poverty.
5. Visit our Exhibition: Visit the Faith in Action for Children exhibition, and see what children, faith leader and many other have to say about ending child poverty and promoting children’s wellbeing. Also consider contributing to the exhibition. Find out more here (add link)
Listen
1. Listen to Children: Create spaces to listen to children with empathy and respect, welcome their wisdom and gifts, and continue to work side-by-side with children to address violence against them and end child poverty. Organize various ‘Listening to Children’ sessions with young people from your community, guided by the topic, Together To End Child Poverty.
- You can use the Learning To Live Together (LTLT) methodology to organise these sessions.
- Focus on providing a safe space for children to express their views on child poverty and violence against children, as well as their ideas for community actions to address both.
- Use the responses given by the children to help you in planning your future End Child Poverty projects.
2. Organize a Forum: Organize a webinar, roundtable, workshop, debate or other such knowledge sharing discussion on ending child poverty.
Reflect
Involve your faith community: Organise a spiritual observance according to your religion or faith tradition, such as prayers, meditation, and faith-based reflection based on your Holy Scriptures, all for the wellbeing of children. You can also organise an inter-faith event, where you invite people from different faith communities to collaborate and host a joint activity for children.
SDGs
1. Teach Sustainable Development: Teach children and youth the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and empower them to take action towards overcoming child poverty and achieving the Agenda 2030. Visit our SDGs Academy for Children, for more information.
2. Sponsor a child: Sponsor a child or a group of children to participate in the SDGs Academy for Children, either in our Pioneer Hub (Kenya) or Model Classroom (Sri Lanka), or through the online interaction. Visit our SDGs Academy for Children, for more information.
Champion
There are many ways to show that you care about children and their wellbeing. Any action towards ending child poverty, big or small, counts. Champions carry out actions such as:
- Volunteering
- Supporting or starting an initiative to alleviate in your community
- Form an end child poverty team in your community or organisation
- Sharing your knowledge
- Fundraising to help overcome child poverty in your community and other communities as well
Specific ways you can become an End Child Poverty Champion include:
1. Involve your school: Partner with the school(s) in your community to organise and host an awareness activity around our ECP@10 campaign message, Together To End Child Poverty
- Invite students, teachers and parents to take part in your event.
- In this school activity, provide a platform for children to speak about how communities can end child poverty and violence against children.
- Remember to provide space for children to showcase their work in addressing child poverty.
2. Partner with a local business: Consider partnering with business enterprises through their Corporate Social Investment / Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, their foundations, or other such opportunities. Let them know how responding to children’s rights and needs, including overcoming child poverty, is strategically beneficial to their work and to all of society.
3. Volunteer: Volunteer your time, skills and expertise, give your resources, funds and other useful donations for the well-being of children affected by poverty in your community. Volunteer your time to visit or serve children affected by poverty.
You can also be part of our End Child Poverty online volunteers team, “On-the-Go”, by volunteering your skills towards communicating to the world about ending child poverty. Visit our online volunteers page for more information. Join On-the-Go, and get a chance to contribute to our work in:
- Photography
- Videography
- Editing
- Design
- Blogging
- Gathering news stories
- Developing or managing social content
- Translation or Interpretation
- Crowd sourcing
- Crowd funding
- Other communication skills
Advocate
1. Advocate and Lobby your government leaders: Write an advocacy statement and meet key decision makers in your community, lobbying them to take action to end child poverty. You can also organise children from your community to speak about what poverty means to them and how communities can work together to end child poverty and violence against children.
- Ask children for their opinions and record and send these responses to your local leaders, accompanied by an advocacy message demanding for action to address children’s needs and end child poverty
- You can record the children’s responses through a video, in written form (as a letter, essay, poem), as an audio message, or through any other format suitable for the children and your community.
- Send us these children’s responses, to inspire many others.
2. Commemorate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (IDEP): Take part in commemorating the October 17th International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (IDEP), through awareness raising, advocacy, and other community mobilization events. Here is a link to our Media Kit that you can use to raise awareness on social media. Visit our IDEP page for more ideas.
3. Commemorate the Day of Prayer and Action for Children: Join us and other partners and friends in commemorating the Day of Prayer and Action for Children, November 20th, which is also the Universal Children’s Day. Visit our Prayer and Action website for more information.
Network
1. Join the GNRC: Consider joining Arigatou International’s Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) in your country, or forming a GNRC group in your community. Visit our GNRC website for more information.
2. Invite others to join you: Approach your friends and your community, including local businesses, NGO’s, civil society, faith based organizations, schools and media, and ask for their involvement and partnership. Let them know what you’re doing to tackle child poverty, and how they can be part of this good work too. Also ask for their ideas and proposed solutions.
Grow with Children
Climate change is a direct threat to a child’s ability to survive, grow, and thrive. Extreme weather events such as cyclones threaten their lives and destroys infrastructure critical to their well-being. Floods compromise water and sanitation facilities, leading to diseases such as cholera to which children are particularly vulnerable. Droughts lead to crop failures and rising food prices, which for the poor mean food insecurity and nutritional deprivations that can have lifelong impacts.
There is consensus on the potential role of forests and trees in addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation, hence through the ECP@10 Campaign, we are carrying out Grow with Children: The 1, MillionTree Campaign, as a way of mobilising our constituencies to face the challenge of climate change and its nexus with poverty.
The tree growing is symbolic towards honouring each child we work with, as well as reaffirming our commitment towards ending child poverty. Also, by taking part in the tree growing, we are all together contributing in positive climate action.
Join us in the campaign as we plant trees across various locations. You can:
- Plant trees and register them: Grow 1 tree, 10 trees, 100 trees, or any number of trees according to the resources available to you – Including fruit trees in the campaign can help address both SDG 13 – climate action and SDG 2 – zero hunger for children.
- Organize tree planting action: Invite or mobilise your friends and other organisations organizations/ schools/to plant trees or join you.
- Sponsor another organisation by providing them with seedlings or funds to buy seedlings to plant trees in their location.
- Organize Run4Trees: This is a sponsored run focusing on our climate! Whether it takes place at your school or your sports club or community, for every round you and your friends or classmates run, trees are donated by local authority to be identified.
- Create awareness on the nexus between climate change/deforestation and child poverty.
- Advocate for climate justice: Get your local politicians to take the climate into account in all their decisions.