Save the Children
Building Bridges' focus has always been on bringing regular and interesting stories to our readers, organizing monthly sessions, connecting friends from different places in the world, and, of course, giving back in life.
We put a strong focus on children and raised donations for children's charities in Colombia and Ghana in previous years and would like to thank everyone for their generous support. Since we are entering the third year of this initiative, we chose a new charity based in Barcelona, Spain.
But before we talk more about “Save the Children in Catalunya,” I wanted to reflect on how we even got there and why I decided to focus on children after I had raised donations for AIDS Walk in New York for 15 years.
It is the big Memorial Day weekend in the United States, and since I was a New Yorker for fifteen years of my life, I am aware that the children in the States will return to school on Tuesday after a long summer break, and so will my children in Spain.
We all had our good and challenging moments during that 11-week-long summer break. I took a hopefully final exam at the Edinburgh Business School after I had started a brand-new job in Barcelona while I was doing my best to keep my children entertained at home.
My daughter had the opportunity to attend her annual summer camp in Germany, where she met up with friends from the prior years, while my son’s babysitter did a wonderful job at home. Most of us complained about the constant heat in Barcelona, but overall it has been an incredible summer break.
But while families are getting ready to send their kids back to school, we quite often forget that many children are not that fortunate to attend private schools in Barcelona, for example. I see those families who were sent by their employers to Barcelona, who tend to cover all expenses, including those for private education.
And then I see local families or others who work hard to provide their kids with that kind of education because they want them to do really well. It is not a secret that salaries are quite low in Barcelona, but I have Catalan friends who went to the German School as well and whose parents made real efforts, like myself.
And while children from many wealthier families at the top English and American private schools, will be bragging about their summer vacations most of us are not even aware that in Catalonia, 36.5% of children and adolescents live in poverty. This means that 490,900 children live in families that cannot afford the necessary expenses to care for them. In fact, households with children have a poverty rate of 30.8% compared to 18.7% for households without children.
Living in situations of poverty during the early stages of life affects the life trajectory of children and exposes them to situations of risk that violate their rights. In addition, poverty and social inequality have devastating effects on children and harm their present and future.
But while I am working two jobs and studying for my doctoral degree so that I will always be able to provide for my children and make sure that they have an excellent future and opportunities ahead, we sometimes don’t even notice that there are children around us who need our help and support.
When I went to school as a child myself, I had this friend who was in a foster family. He suddenly appeared and was very popular; he was very outgoing, and he was a lot of fun. Back in the day I was an introvert, and he was the opposite.
He loved playing soccer and all that boys' stuff, and my parents knew the foster father, where he and his brother were staying for almost three years. But when my mother called his parents one day to invite him to my birthday, I learned that they had returned to their parents.
It took us decades before we had a chance to connect. I was living in New York, and he had five children and the first grandchildren. He had taken his wife’s name and told me that his parents had been alcoholics and that it never stopped until they died. He wished that he had stayed with his foster family. Later he quite often passed by their home in the car and remembered those happy days in his life.
I am glad that I had the opportunity to thank him for his friendship, and it touched me that he had found his happy family life at the end. But while my classmates and I were all living in nice houses in the village, people had no idea of the struggle that some children had to endure.
There was this boy in school whose father was a wealthy farmer. He got bullied for years for coming from a rich family and for being different. But the other kids didn’t know that his father used him for most of his life to unload his frustrations on him. He always had to work on the farm and received beatings but not gratitude.
I have enjoyed writing stories for this blog so much. However, I really wanted to use this story not just to raise awareness but also to hope that some of us will take a moment and realize that it is not just about our children doing their homework and coming home with perfect grades. There are other children in our communities who need our support even more.
One way to give back is to support Save the Children Catalunya, which works with children and their families living in poverty and social vulnerability in Barcelona and Canovelles. These programs provide comprehensive care for children and their families so that the economic situation in which they live does not prevent them from fully enjoying their rights and being able to reach the maximum of their abilities.
I had a chance to connect with Monica from Save the Children in Catalunya, who informed me that their organization works hard to protect children from violence, fights against child poverty, promotes educational equality, and monitors public policy.
If you enjoy this blog and want to make a difference, then you can follow the link below, which takes you right to their website where you can make either a regular (Donar al mes) or a one-off (Donar una vez) donation.
Haz una donación | Save the Children
Please don't hesitate to drop me a line; every donation, no matter how high, will grant you full membership at Building Bridges for one year.
And as someone who didn’t have the easiest childhood and youth myself, I want to thank you for your support.