Write to children affected by disaster, conflict and poverty

Type of activity: A writing assignment that will help groups “connect” to children whom they met in the exhibit

Adapt this lesson for your group.

In several places in the exhibit, you saw drawings children made of their ecperience. On an adjoining bulletin board is this message: Do not forget us.

You can write a message too—a hope, a prayer, a thought—for a child. Write to a child who has

• Survived the tsunami but lost a family member in the process; still has trouble sleeping at night.
• Lives in a camp in Uganda; goes to a makeshift school, has very little food, lives in an 8’ x 12’ hut, has no running water, has no electricity. The person’s sister would have died from malaria if not for the help by the medical teams sent by Medical Teams International.
• Lives in a tent camp after the earthquake in Haiti. The family has very little food, inadequate sanitation.
• Has HIV, infected at birth from an HIV-positive mother. Lives in a small village in Africa. Mother is dying of AIDS. Doesn’t have money for necessary drugs. The mother receives homecare from members of the church in the village and medical help from the clinic supplied by Medical Teams International.
• Lives in a garbage dump in Mexico City. Gathers recyclables with family, which earns only a few dollars a day. Has no running water in dump.
• Has extensive burns on 60 percent of his or her body and is a patient at the children’s hospital in Moldova; has deep scars and tissue damage; cannot use left arm at this point. Parent stays with child and prepares meals for him or her in the hospital room. Receives physical therapy from volunteers from Medical Teams International

If your group's responses are ones you would like to share with us, please e-mail them to us. We will review the messages and post the best ones on our Web site.

(Note: We cannot promise that we will pass on all of the messages or letters to the children. In places where English is spoken, we can send the messages. However, we do not always have the resources to translate the messages into the languages spoken in the various countries.)