For the Children

The Child's Right to Thrive Student Group is leading a grass-roots effort to improve the lives of children living in congregate care.

New graduate student group is helping children living in orphanages around the world.

Since its final ratification and entry into force in September of 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children has served as a worldwide template for the community of nations and its international goal of insuring that all children receive the familial, community, and governmental support necessary for physical, mental, social, and spiritual growth.  Of particular concern to the convention are the millions of children throughout the world living in congregate care, which is defined as a facility in which staff members, working on rotating shifts, provide care.  Children in these settings, particularly those in Ukraine and China, are of special concern to several Tufts University graduate students who have, with assistance from the university's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, launched the Child's Right to Thrive Student Group.  The group, which includes graduate students from the departments of child development and computer science, is leading a grass-roots effort to improve the lives of children living in congregate care.  They are doing this by promoting mutual understanding and collaboration between organizations (within the United States and abroad) and individuals working on behalf of children in these countries.

The graduate students involved in this work have extensive experience working with children living in orphanages and other settings.  For example, recent child development graduate Iris Chin Ponte and current graduate student Maryna Vashchenko have done outreach work at orphanages in Beijing, China and Mykolayiv, Ukraine, respectively.  Sarah Frederiksen, a fellow child development graduate student, joined the group partly as a result of her travels in South America in 2006 and her encounter with children in Columbia, which revealed "very stark contrasts" to the children she worked with in the United States.  These specific graduate students, as well others involved with the group (who include child development graduate students Ashley Everette, Yibing Li, and Dmytro Say, as well as computer science graduate student John Hugg) have seen firsthand the plight of children living in congregate care.

"I was shocked at the conditions [of the orphanages in China]," recalls Ponte, who visited a number of these care sites during her Fulbright year abroad in 2006-2007. "There were sixty children at one I visited. Some were running around, some were crying in cribs, others were just rocking and looking out the window. There were only four adult caregivers. From that moment on I knew that I had to do something."

A Pressing Need
In 2004, as part of its "Children on the Brink" report, UNICEF estimated that there were 143 million orphans living in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.   Many of these children are orphans and, as such, live in orphanages, baby homes, or institutions.  Often times, these settings lack the resources necessary to serve the developmental and social needs of these children.  But orphans are just one group that the Child's Right to Thrive Student Group are hoping to have a positive impact upon.  They would also like to help children living in congregate settings whose parents are unable or prohibited from caring for them due to such factors as extreme poverty, termination of parental rights (through court adjudication), and government policies  (as in the case of China's one-child per family policy). As Maryna Vashchenko shared during a recent interview, the majority of children living in congregate care in Ukraine, for example, actually have living parents so, for the group, its imperative that they focus on children from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences—but who share the common experience of living in state or community care. 

Furthermore, Vashchenko believes that many of these children share something else in common.

 "Institutions have detrimental effects on children, resulting in deficits that range from stunted physical growth and brain development to emotional and behavioral problems often persisting in adolescence and adulthood," she says.  "Although most developed countries no longer use orphanages or other institutions for orphaned or displaced children, many of the world's nations still do. As a native of one such country and an aspiring applied developmental scientist, I cannot remain unresponsive. Both my research and applied work focus on ways to promote positive development of institutionalized children."

The negative consequences of institutional life that Vashchenko cites are caused by, among other things, scarce financial support and lack of information resources. The Child's Right to Thrive Student Group hopes to address these deficits by partnering with international congregate care organizations and developing a web site which would provide direct-care givers and child work professionals access to social services resources, medical information, and current scholarship in child development. 

"We see the website as a valuable tool and it is our primary goal at this time," says Vashchenko. 

With a tentative launch date of sometime this summer, Vashchenko emphasizes that the site "will help guide interventions where the well-being of the child is the chief objective." 

Iris Ponte at an orphanage in China.

While the site will be in English, another goal of the group is translation of the site into Russian, Ukrainian, and Chinese.

Building a Strong Foundation
The Child's Right to Thrive Student Group was officially launched in September 2007 after receiving "seed money" from the Tisch College.  Since its inception, the group has focused on three distinct areas (developing the group's website, fundraising and advocacy, and education and outreach), and is currently focusing on developing a strong foundation for the future.  This involves educating the Tufts community about their work and embarking on a targeted fundraising campaign.  To achieve these objectives, the Child's Right to Thrive Student Group will be presenting an exhibit of photos from Chinese and Ukrainian orphanages in October 2008.  The exhibition, titled "One Day", will be held at the university's Slater Concourse Gallery and will also include a silent auction.  As of April 2008, the group has received donations of items and services such as gourmet-food gift baskets, jewelry, works by local artists, and a photo session with a professional photographer.

These events are meant to both highlight the plight of children living in state or community care and generate much needed funds for website development and the educational and outreach goals identified by the group.  Since fundraising is such a key area, the group is relying on the efforts of Ashley Everette and Sarah Frederiksen.   Frederiksen, in particular, has significant fundraising experience, having organized fundraisers as well as art shows in her native California. 

"After the seed money from Tisch, we need to be self-funding to realize our goals," says Frederiksen, who has been reaching out to potential auction sponsors and writing appeals to possible donors.

"The photo exhibit will raise public awareness of the condition of children living in orphanages and [help] raise funds for organizations and individuals engaged in helping children thrive and develop," says Everette.

Beyond fundraising and outreach, the group is focusing on congregate care in Ukraine and China, and Frederiksen and Everette hope to receive funding for work with a non-governmental agency in India to assist in creating a quality of care program for international adoptions from that country.

The Benefits of Collaboration
In addition to meeting the goals stated above, the group hopes that their outreach will also expand the interdisciplinary focus of the Child's Right to Thrive Student Group.  Currently, computer science graduate student (and Iris Ponte's husband) John Hugg is working on the group's website, and the members also hope to involve students from other Tufts schools.

"Our group has great potential to engage in interdisciplinary research at Tufts," says Yibing Li.  "Knowledge about child nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy would be very helpful, and we could also bring together Fletcher students with a focus on policy, and students from the Tufts medical and dental schools."

Adds Dmytro Say, "Without a doubt, two heads are better than one.  Cooperation with other students from different departments will give us all new perspectives, new experiences, and an enormous pool of creative ideas."

Yibing Li is also confident that, as the group extends its outreach and mission to the greater university community, more students will become involved with the group.

"The diversity of the Tufts student body and Tufts student activism [will] make the international focus of the program of great appeal."

Notes Vashchenko, "Helping children and doing meaningful work on their behalf knows no borders.  In fact, it can unite nations and continents." 

The Child's Right to Thrive Student Group.

UNICEF estimates that by the year 2010, 12.5% of the under 18 population of Sub-Saharan Africa will be orphans, 6.7% in Asia, and 6% in Latin American and the Caribbean. Ukraine and China are just two developing nations in need of help in providing the best services to children. Worldwide, children displaced by war, famine, social policy, political instability, and economic change are those most vulnerable and at risk. The Child's Right to Thrive Student Group, believing in interdisciplinary research, cross-campus collaboration, the importance of international work, and the power of civic engagement, hopes to transcend politics and points-of-view and impress that in the lives of children, the availability of the best scholarship on children's development is key to a child's right to thrive.

To learn more about the Child's Right to Thrive Student Group or how to become involved contact Iris Ponte at iris.ponte@tufts.edu or call 617-605-2211.

Article by David Rego, history graduate student.

Child's Right to Thrive Student Group photo by Laura Beals Photography.