Knowledge Centre
Facilitating Knowledge
was launched, on 17th October 2014, at the Sarvodaya Headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka. End Child Poverty Knowledge Centre is a global faith-inspired hub for research, resource gathering; networking; experience sharing; and knowledge dissemination. The Knowledge Centre also serves to build the capacities of organizations working to reduce child poverty in Asia and other regions of the world. It draws upon indigenous and progressive tools of development, as well as faith-inspired resources and infrastructure.
The Knowledge Centre has a virtual space on the End Child Poverty website and physical presence at the Sarvoday headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The Online Knowledge Centre is intended to digitize where possible, the Knowledge Centre’s resources on various functional areas such as:
- Policy Briefing papers, working papers and reports (reports, publications, journal articles and working papers);
- Curriculum, tools and guidelines (training manuals and religious books);
- Opinion (content blogs, newsletters, case studies, essays, meetings and workshop information).
- Audiovisual material such as videos, documentaries, video conferencing and online forum discussions.
The Knowledge Centre has sought to facilitate knowledge exchange on a variety of topics, policies, programs and practices among stakeholders, practitioners, academics and policymakers. In addition, features innovative and evidence-based practices that have a positive impact on children and their caregivers. The Online Resource Platform will feature Global Mapping on Child Poverty Index: A search engine will be incorporated within the online portal to enable the dissemination of accurate and latest statistics or concepts that relate to the content.
Objectives of the Knowledge Centre
The main objectives of the Knowledge Centre are two-fold:
To strengthen the Knowledge Centre as a global faith-inspired hub serving developing countries with easily accessible and up-to-date information related to eradicating child poverty.
1
To launch a clear and easy to navigate resource platform with the ultimate goal of improving ‘information accessibility and availability as well as ‘knowledge capacities’ of actors in sectors whose primary work focuses on combatting child poverty.
2
Educate
Contribution of the Knowledge Centre
At the End Child Poverty Knowledge Centre, we believe that child poverty can be overcomed through education and knowledge.
Over the years, the Knowledge Centre, in collaboration with Sarvodaya inaugurated a Children’s Empowerment centre in Meethotamulla, Sri Lanka . Meethotamulla is an urban slum area which consists of 140 households, mostly underprivillaged. The objective of this centre was to provide tuition classes for children sitting for their year five scholarship examination and Ordinary Level Examination. The centre further aimed to encourage children to complete their secondary education and will provide knowledge to children on essential life skills such as communication and critical thinking. This centre also serves as a safe space for children to express themselves and to carry out recreational and extracurricular activities.
The Knowledge Centre has also been keen on raising awareness by on various campaigns by End Child poverty, especially during the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (IDEP) annual campaigns as well as other commemorations by Arigatou international; such as the Day of prayer and Action for Children (DPAC). Awareness has often cut across enlightening children on their rights, socializing the SDGs among children and how they can be involved in actualizing them and enlightening children on the need to take actions in their communities to address child poverty.
“Children are most affected by poverty in current times. Children have low levels of self-esteem, lack of financial resources and these causes mental and physical issues and therefore we have come up with a solution to fight child poverty by conducting leadership programmes to children in the poverty stricken villages of Sri Lanka” – Sanara; Child, 16 years from Sri Lanka.