There’s a secure shelter for children in an area where chaos and disaster are arising. Children’s live turn upside down when a disaster happens. Whether it’s a hurricane in Florida, a war in Iraq or a forest fire in Tanzania, natural scare children around the globe. Kids can then find themselves and their families living kilometers away from where they were raised. Too often, those childer have seen death and all kinds of destruction. Some find their home replaced with a tent and some only remember their school as a distant memory. Those children’s whole life, for some time at least, has completely changed. Now, what do we all have to do to help them go through this difficult stage a little less painfully?
Child-Friendly Spaces are to serve them as a safe haven.
Building and managing Child-Friendly Spaces is one of our first and vital activities in emergency areas. Along with providing the food, clear water, and building materials for temporary shelters – this is the work that first comes to your mind when you think about a crisis situation – your personal support also helps us build and set up Child-Friendly Spaces to look after the specific needs of young children. It’s essential for children to have a place where they feel secure, where they can play, and just keep hold of their precious childhood.
How disasters impact children
Children often go through different emotional phases in a time crisis. Each of them needs a different kind of support at every stage. When an emergency is just starting, when all their lives are being thrown into chaos, kids feel shock, often numbness and confusion. In this stage, wefirst identify children who may need additional assistance and give them reassurance and comfort, which is also known as Psychological First Aid. It includes culturally appropriate rituals of grieving, access to the free information regarding the disaster and all associated relief efforts. These procedures are referred as specialized services. In addition, we provide supervision for children who are away from their families. We try to locate and reunite the families. During the weeks after an emergency, when the vital saving actions are held, kids often feel immense grief, fear, rage or mood swings. What happened before begins to sink in. The children need productive activities and a safe atmosphere to process recent events. About three to four weeks after the emergency starts, comes the third phase. Children’s losses now hit home even harder. Kids try to understand the course of events and their impact on the future of their families. If children don’t get all the comfort, at this stage they often try to isolate themselves. We must all be there for them — both we and you. These children don’t have to face any of this alone. As we come together, we can provide a secure, welcoming roof and activities that will help them deal with all the events they’ve been through and recover from them.
