WOW day 2006

WOW day 2005

Bangkok
Sierra Leone

WOW day 2004

News 2004 from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002

News about the children from Grozny, November 2005:

This summer Malik and Khadizhat Gataeva participated in a conference  which took place in the Rudolf Steiner school in Vestfold in Norway. Here they told their story about all the children they have taken care of throughout the two wars in Chechnya.

From Norway they went to Finland were they met with Waldorf school teachers and pupils in Ekenäs and Helsinki. They were given 20.000 euros in Finland. This made it possible for them to go to Grozny and try to help some more of the children to travel to Lithuania.

Khadizhat went to Grozny in July and worked hard to get passports, visas and tickets for the children. After two months she had managed to get through all the bureaucracy and paid all the necessary bribes so 15 of the children could go with her to Kaunas, where they arrived on 29^th September. They had been invited by an organization to stay for one month and hoped to be able to prolong their visas after one month.

In Kaunas the children have been through a medical examination, and it turned out that three of the children have problems with their hearts and may need operations, two more of them need another kind of operations and all of them have “bad blood”, as they say. According to the doctors their blood looks as if it is comes from old people.

All of them have terrible stories to tell. Many of them have been raped, they have seen their parents being killed and they have lived with fear their whole lives. They have sheltered in a cellar for days while the bombing was going on outside. When they see an airplane they are still afraid that it will bomb them.

In the beginning the 15 children stayed in a sanatorium, but that was very expensive so after ten days they were taken out from there and put in a women’s monastery, but there was no heating so they had to look for yet another place. Now they live 65 km outside of Kaunas in rooms of some kind in a municipality building where they have to only pay  for electricity. The other children live in an apartment in the centre of Kaunas. I visited them there in beginning of October. The place was very humid and cold with no light coming in, so we decided to do something about their situation.

Back in Norway we started to collect clothes, bed linen and paint. On 7^th November a big truck left for Lithuania with two men in it who would paint the apartment.

Today I got the message from Kaunas that the apartment is finished. Now it will be possible for Khadizhat, Malik and the children to live there through the winter.

In the meantime we are undertaking WOW-day throughout Europe and collecting money to try and buy them a house were they can stay together as a family. Such a house will cost about 100.000 euros, so we have to do a lot of work. They need money for food and also running costs for the next months, so we hope that many schools will participate in  WOW-day for these children who have already suffered so much. They deserve a quite and good life with adequate medical treatment.

In the picture you see a child being helped with her schoolwork by one of the workers in our social centre in Sierra Morena, Bogota, Colombia.

Our WOW-day efforts have given hope and a new life to 150 children in Bogota, Colombia, 100 blind children in St. Petersburg, Russia, more than 200 abused children in Bangkok, Thailand, 40 children in Sierra Leone and more than 100 children in the townships of South Africa. We have also helped the first Waldorf school in China to start. This year you have the chance to help children from the war torn Chechnya, HIV positive children and tribal children in India to get an education and treatment. In addition you could work for one of the previous WOW-day projects. Help us to help children have an appropriate education, adequate nutrition and to be properly cared for!

WOW-day organization

WOW-day is organized as a cooperative venture between the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education (ECSWE) and Friends of Waldorf Education.
ECSWE meets three times a year and has representatives from 20 European countries representing more than 600 Steiner-Waldorf schools. At these meetings and between times WOW-day is planned and coordinated by an ECSWE working group consisting of:
Meri Arni-Kautu, Finland; Astrid Bjønness, Norway; Christopher Clouder, UK; Jeppe Flummer, Denmark; Kamiel van Herp, Belgium and Helmut von Loebell, Austria/Colombia.

To choose the projects we use the expertise of the staff of the Friends of Waldorf Education, and all the money that is raised is directly transferred through their accounts and international
contacts. We would also be very interested in hearing about your experiences and projects for WOW day so we can post them on our webpages to encourage and inspire others.

Please note!

Without the exact details of your address we are unable to thank you, or pass on any further information. Please note down your school, address and class where relevant on all transactions.

Year: Sum: Number of schools:

1994/95: 24.906 € 20 schools
1995/96: 37.009 € 39 schools
1996/97: 28.348 € 26 schools
1997/98: 38.184 € 25 schools
1998/99: 33.265 € 17 schools
1999/00: 46.435 € 30 schools
2000/01: 61.193 € 38 schools
2001/02: 59.360 € 40 schools
2002/03: 63.750 € 37 schools
2003/04: 77.373 € 34 schools
2004/05: 445.614 € 132 schools

Total: 905.438 € 214 schools

Main Participating schools:
Times / Name of school / Country:
11 Freie Waldorfschule am Bodensee Germany
10 Freie Waldorfschule auf den Fildern Germany
10 Rudolf Steinerskolen i Vestfold Norway
10 Rudolf Steiner-Skolen i Århus Denmark
8 Hibernia School, Antwerpen Belgium
8 Rudolf Steiner Schule Siegen Germany
8 Steinerskolen på Lillehammer Norway
8 Martinskolan Sweden
7 York Steiner School England
7 Ellen Key Skolan Sweden
7 Freie Waldorfschule Ulm Römerstrasse Germany
7 Internationaal Hulpfonds Netherlands
6 Helsingen Rudolf Steiner-koulu Finland
6 Elmfield School England
6 Freie Waldorfschule Saarbrücken Germany
5 Rudolf Steiner Schule Salzburg Austria
5 Fräi-öffentlech-Waldorfschoul Letzebuerg Luxemburg
5 Steinerskolen i Indre Østfold Norway
5 Sophiaskolan Sweden
5 Söderköpings Waldorfskola Sweden
5 Michael Hall School England
5 Freie Waldorfschule Saar Pfalz Germany
5 Rudolf Steiner School of South Devon England

In addition 8 schools have participated 4 times and 15 schools have participated 3 times.

Corporación educative y social Waldorf, Bogotá, Colombia
In June last year with the help of WOW-day an educational and social centre was able to open in Sierra Morena, Bogota. Thanks to support from WOW-day they can take care of 50 children in the kindergarten. Among the families 26 out of 45 parents are unemployed, but they carry out different tasks for the centre and learn how to treat their children without violence or abuse. In the centre there is also a library, and there will be rooms for music, modelling, weaving, knitting and painting. Here 150 children get help with their schoolwork, one group in the morning and one in the afternoon. Also 15 children who have no place in a school get help to prevent them from going onto the street to work, use drugs or prostitute themselves. We were able to support them with 31.000 € this year.
The social centre is situated in the middle of the poorest area in Bogotá. Fear is at every corner. The Mayor has declared our zone an emergency area due to the lack of educational centres for children, the hunger they suffer and the armed violence to which they are subjected.
WOW-day will continue to work for these children. We have done so much already, but we must not forget the children of Bogotá.

ART studio, St. Petersburg:
In September the new flat that we have bought and renovated for WOW-day funds will open as a small therapy centre for sight-impaired children. We were able to give them 14.300 € this year. That made it possible to renovate and partly furnish the flat.
We met the therapists Alla, Igor and Svetlana in August, and they are very grateful for the help from WOW-day. You can still work for this project.

Waldorf kindergarten and school in Chengdu, China:
We will be able to support this first Waldorf school in China with 5000 € this first year. This autumn they will start with a second class. If you want to support this new, school, you are welcome to do so.

South-Africa:
As 130 German schools worked for South-Africa last year we were able to support the work there with about 350.000 €. That is wonderful, but the need in South-Africa is enormous. We will continue working for them.

Alpha is 14 years old. He attends Goderich Waldorf School in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He will be in class 3 this school year. Alpha is an orphan. When he was 7, his parents were killed by marauding rebels and he was then abducted and consequently conscripted as a child combatant (soldier). After three years in captivity, Alpha was among 3000 children who were released on the intervention of humanitarian organizations in 1999. Since other members of his family could not be found he became a street child like many others in the city. Then he came in contact with Action for Child Protection. Alpha has undergone intensive counselling and now seems to be better adjusted with a foster family at Goderich Village. In November 2004 Alpha was enrolled at the school and admitted in class 2. Concerning his future Alpha says: “I want to be a doctor so that I can help other street children” He always says that he is happy to be at the Waldorf School which has given him the opportunity to be valued and loved. Last year we were able to send this project 4055 €. Shannoh Kandoh wrote to us this winter: “ We received your WOW donation from Friends of Waldorf Education in Germany, and it has been of great support to us. We have been able to pay our rent for the school year 2004/05. We would like to express our thanks and appreciation to all our donors whose generous contributions have kept the school running. We would like to appeal for your continuous support to our school project in Sierra Leone.”

Last autumn the school was located at Allen Town in the east of Freetown. But due to the dilapidated and unsafe condition of the building, they were under pressure from educational authorities to relocate or close down the school. The situation resulted in the total restructuring of the school. Also the teachers were criticised for not being qualified enough. They agreed to recruit trained teachers and they now have three classes with 40 children, and will grow with one class in September and will then have 60 children and 7 teachers. They hope to send one of the teachers to Great Britain for Waldorf training. In the part of town where they are now located, Goderich village, about 98% of the population lives in poverty. By the end of the school year they conducted a “Family Reconciliation Meeting in the school. They had seen that there were rifts among the families due to some ugly incidents during the war – some families for the past years have not spoken to each other and are blaming one another of being responsible for certain crimes while the country was at war. (The war ended in 2001). They succeeded in organizing a Peace Meeting during which libation was poured as a traditional practice to the ancestors for unity and reconciliation in the community. Many parents were surprised that a school could create that opportunity for them to experience a long lost tradition of reconciliation in an urban setting.

They still continue to negotiate for a piece of land for a school building project as the current building has only four classrooms which cannot accommodate the growing school population next year.

We will continue to work for this project because the situation in Sierra Leone after the war is very bad. They will need help for many years and we can help these 60 children to get an education and then hope for the future.

Chechnya is situated in the northern part of Caucasus. It has been a republic within Russia, but has always tried to get independence. In Russian literature from the 19th century we can read about the peoples in Caucasus fighting for independence. Both Lermontov, Pushkin and Tolstoy visited the area and described its beauty and people.
During Soviet times the Chechens were deported to Siberia by Stalin, but after 13 years of exile they were allowed to return, but many had died on the way, and many were killed.
This dramatic story has continued up until today. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Chechens claimed independence, but in 1994 the Russians invaded the republic. This war went on till 1996 when an agreement was signed which said that Russia would never invade Chechnya again, and the question of independence should be resolved within 5 years.
Then in 1999 the Russians invaded again, and this war has never really stopped even though we hear very little about it.
It is said that about 200.000 people have died during these two wars. About 40.000 of them are children.
One day during the first war the market place in Groznyj was bombed. People ran to find shelter. Among these people were Khadizhat Gataeva and her husband Malik. When they came up from the cellar they saw corpses and blood everywhere, bodies without legs and without arms, a real picture of horror. After some time seven children came out of the ruins, one smaller than the other, - they were dirty and ragged, - and the question was: where should they go? Their house was destroyed, their parents were killed.

Khadizhat had grown up in a children’s home where she had been regularly beaten. She could not understand why the director did not take the children home so that they too could have a mother and a father. Even though she was a child herself she promised that she would never send a child to a children’s home. Now her promise was tested: could she let these children be sent somewhere where she did not know what would happen to them? Together with her husband she decided to take care of them.

Since then many children have found their way to Khadizhat and Malik’s home. They have taken care of hundreds of children. Some were Chechen and some were Russian, some were Ukrainian and some did not know their nationality. But all of them were welcome to stay in Gataeva’s home. Some have been able to go back to their families, but some have been adopted by them. Today they have 44 children in their family.

Some of them live in a house in Groznyj where the bombing is still continuing, and some live in a house in Kaunas in Lithuania where they go to school and have a home. Khadizhat and Malik travel between Groznyj and Kaunas, and with some help from their family and the biggest children they manage to keep the homes going.
They have had help from a German organisation, but this December this assistance will stop.
WOW-day will help these children to have a home, and support Khadizhat and Malik in their very important work.

Sandhya is a 5 years old girl, the daughter of a destitute woman who did not know what life had in store for her. She was found next to her dead mother. She had no mother, no father only a legacy of infection including tuberculosis and severe malnutrition.
She has been gradually improving in her health and has recovered completely from TB. Freedom Foundation has been able to start Anti-retroviral medication for her and can see an even better improvement since then. She has been attending school for the last one and a half year.

UNAIDS estimates that every day 1700 children under 15 years of age become infected, largely by parent to child transmission. Normally, the adult male member of a family is the first to contract HIV. He then passes it on to his wife, who gives birth to children who may be positive. In India there are efforts to prevent this transmission, but for those already infected, the possibilities of getting proper care are bleak.

The state of Andhra Pradesh has the largest number of HIV+ve cases in India. Very few organizations are working with these people; Freedom Foundation is one of the few taking care of children who are already infected.

After the death of both parents the orphaned children are left behind homeless, helpless and with no support. The extended families are not very enthusiastic about taking custody of the children, and they are either abandoned in their village or left at the government run children’s home.

Freedom Foundation through its “DIYA”project is a home for HIV+ve orphaned children. Today they care for 26 residential children and many more who continue to access care at the HIV/AIDS centre on an outpatient basis. The stigma attached to this condition in Andhra Pradesh is very strong yet with legal support we have managed to find one school to admit these children.

Through this proposal we hope to gain support for education and nutrition for the HIV+ve children residing at “Diya”, Freedom Foundation, Secunderabad.

Samata

Samata is a social justice organization working for the rights of the tribal people of Andhra Pradesh. As a registered organization they have been working since 1990 with a group of tribal and rural youth. In the tribal areas where Samata works, the rate of literacy is approximately 16% for males and 10% for females and is much lower for the primitive tribal groups. Many of the interior and hill-top villages do not have even primary schools and because of this many tribal children are denied elementary education.

As an organization working with the tribal people, Samata campaign for the education of the tribal children and struggles with the government to implement the programmes. They have at present, 40 small single teacher community schools called Bala Mitra Badis (tribal children’s schools). Each school has 20-30 children in the age group of 4-10 years. The teachers are selected by the villages along with the community representative groups. They are young tribal girls and boys who have completed school level education.

As Waldorf education has an affinity with the way of life of the tribal people, they have tried to adopt some of the Waldorf methods of teaching into the tribal community schools.

WOW-day will support this work for educating children of the tribal villages in Andhra Pradesh.

Crossing from Cape Town airport towards the city itself, a vast expanse of improvised housing stretches across to the horizon. This is Cape Flats, a vast windswept and barren area where there are African townships and squatter camps. Great poverty and misfortune lies alongside courage and enterprise. Makeshift houses of plastic sheeting, cardboard and discarded iron make a “home” among the squalor which lacks basic services such as proper sanitation . Here the children are seriously disadvantaged and grow up in an unhealthy environment with severely limited possibilities, endemic violence, abuse and shocking deprivation. However they and their families can be helped out of this vicious circle through education and this is where the Centre for Creative Education has taken the initiative. They run two programmes which we want to support this year.

Educare Centres.
These are particularly concerned with the plight of children from birth to seven years of age. These centres run by the local women themselves who struggle against the abuse, neglect, disease, malnutrition, violence, crime, environmental degradation and poverty that surrounds them. The Centre for Creative Education gives them the training and support they need for this and there are now 14 Educare centres, some with more then 100 children in little more than a few tiny rooms in a shack and a very small dusty yard. Yet it is reckoned that at any time 3000 to 4000 children are benefiting from the programmes and all share the hope of building a better world for these children and future generations.

Iseko Sobutu
This progamme takes the training step further and is for the women who have already completed the initial courses. They have almost nothing so they are shown how to make their own equipment from natural materials. Yet money is needed to feed the children, and activities like drawing and painting are seldom possible because the materials are just not available to them. So the funds we can raise will make all the difference.

Pictures from South-Africa:

WOW day 2006

WOW day 2005

WOW day 2004

News 2004 from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002