Every Share Helps!

Children are one third of our population and all of our future.
---Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981

Today, nearly half of our world’s inhabitants are under 25 years old, making children the most essential component to development and the future of our world. Educating and caring for the children and young adults of today will ensure a better tomorrow for generations to come.

Here is a look at just three exciting organizations available to you!

Action for Children in Conflict

Action for Children in Conflict, founded in 1995, is an organization focused on the rehabilitation of children affected by some of the most extreme circumstances, including poverty, war, hunger, abuse, illness, exploitation, and neglect in Africa. Most of the children have little education and are susceptible to turning to drugs.

Action for Children in Conflict empowers these children and young people in their communities through showing them how to be productive and make positive life changes, getting them off the streets and back into schools, working on the roots of the problems at hand rather than simply trying to eliminate the most obvious symptoms.

Volunteers are able to work on a variety of tasks, including outreach programs to prevent children from taking to the streets through education, economic, and youth based empowerment projects. For rehabilitation, volunteers are able to work in the Interim Care Center for children who are taken off the streets, performing tasks such as teaching schoolwork, creative arts, sports therapy, counseling, and teaching agricultural and community activities. Through the Internally Displaced Children and Families program, volunteers assist in the creation of microfinance loans to allow families to begin their own businesses, schooling of children, counseling, training for intertribal peace and conflict resolution, and legal advice on their rights to land and property. The organization also helps with repatriation of families—assisting displaced families return home in a safe manner.

• Volunteers are currently needed in the areas of communications, social/youth leader, family and child sponsorship coordinators, fundraising interns, web design, and more.
• Location: Kenya
• Duration: 3-6 months
• For more information, check out: www.actionchildren.org

River Kids Project

River Kids Project is a non-governmental organization based in Cambodia, founded in 2007, which focuses on eliminating child trafficking through working with families who are at risk due to financial instability, drug addiction, abuse, or extreme poverty. Children in Cambodia are frequently sold as slaves for a number of reasons, including debt, prostitution, or for the purpose of drug trafficking or illegal adoptions. In order to target areas which need the most help, Riverkids researches areas where there is the greatest amount of poverty, lowest levels of education, lowest employable skills, and a great deal of debt and family dysfunction.

Riverkids has three program sites located within or near slums. They serve up to 150 children on each of their three sites. Through community involvement, creating safe employment alternatives, and human empowerment, they are able to prevent potential child trafficking problems.

• Volunteers are able to work in the areas of education, social work, health, income, fundraising, researching, and more.
• Location: Cambodia
• For more information, check out: www.riverkidsproject.org

Youth Crime Watch of Liberia

Youth Crime Watch is an organization that spans across the globe, sustaining the youth of the countries in which they are based.

Youth Crime Watch of Liberia is a youth-led organization in Liberia dedicated to mobilizing and equipping youth led movements in schools and communities in partnership with public and private institutions to eliminate the dangerous environments created by crime, violence, and drugs to empower youth and grant a brighter future through training them to be productive members of society.

Youth Crime Watch has 9 universal functions which have made its programs successful around the world:

1. Crime Reporting
2. Youth Patrol
3. Education
4. Mentoring & Mediation
5. Conflict Resolution
6. Peer and Cross Age Teaching/Training
7. Action Projects
8. Information Communication Technology
9. Youth Employment and Empowerment

Volunteers are able to take on projects which allow them to focus on some of the most pressing issues on our world today, working with different communities to empower people, educate, integrate diversity, and create nonviolent atmospheres. Volunteers empower youth and advise them on how to implement action projects successfully, as well as teaching in the Liberian school systems. With 65% of Liberia’s population being youth, education of women and young girls is also a focal point of their work. Volunteers can also work on communications projects, website and marketing strategies, proposal writing, leadership and entrepreneurship programs, and a variety of others.

• Location: Liberia
• Duration: 2 weeks to 6 months
• For more information, check out: www.ycwliberia.org