“International Day of the African Child,” has been recognized on June 16 each year since 1991, when initiated by the Organization of African Unity. It is an effort to focus to the problems being faced by children on the African continent.
For many children in Malawi, especially those who live in the village areas, there is little semblance of childhood as it is recognized in Europe and America. Large numbers have little or no chance for education, and this fact seals them into a lifetime of living in the same village area where their families have lived for years, cultivating the same small plot of land, owning the same meager number of possessions and viewing their future with no hope of ever improving their lifestyle. Children are aware of this fact and beg the visitor to help them with school fees. They know education is their only ticket to a lifestyle they dream of enjoying.
Children in developed nations enjoy all of the benefits of an available education, and this includes being connected to friends, family, and distant parts of the world through the internet. They enjoy schools filled with books, and classrooms brimming with educational resources. Field trips take them to interesting and educational places, often even to other nations. The African child, in most instances, has almost none of this, if they live outside the cities. For a village child life is filled with working a sun up to sun down day, along side their parents, day after day after day. Even if they can go to school for a few years they often sit on dirt floors or under a tree, and the only textbook belongs to the teacher. There is no internet, no library, and no chance to move up in life after a diploma.
For the Malawi village child the speed of technology is making the distance between African children and children in developed nations wider and deeper than ever before. Western nations, in the area of education, are moving past children in sub-Saharan Africa at a pace that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. How will the African child ever catch up? How will he or she ever hope to participate in the worldwide community that is being developed by email, Facebook and the Internet?
The theme for this year is, “The Rights of Children with Disabilities: The Duty to Protect, Respect, Promote and Fulfill,” chosen by the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC). Perhaps it is a good day for each of us to prayerfully determine what we are doing to help the children of Malawi, especially those with disabilities.