|
 Patricia
Parker MBE
Founder of Kids
for Kids
Interview with Patricia Parker
What moved you
to begin Kids for Kids? Did you
collaborate with others to create it?
I
visited Darfur in 2001 and met a little 9 year old lad who was walking 7 hours
to reach water and then carrying it back to his mother and his three
younger brothers and sister. Under Darfur there is one of the largest
aquafers in Africa - yet no one was digging handpumps for villagers.
Having met his mother and seen the three little goats she owned - her only
possessions - I realised that introducing animal loans, providing handpumps -
and other long term self sustainable projects, would have an immediate and dramatic
effect on families who were living lives of intolerable, and inexcusable
hardship.
What type of
self-sustaining projects does your organization run? What criteria is used to
assess who qualifies for the projects?
We
aim to help the poorest families and these are selected by the
communities themselves. The projects all have to be self sustainable and key
is the training of committees, often but not exclusively, women. These
committees are trained in bookkeeping and record taking and enable, for
example, goat loans to be sustainable and help the whole community. We
lend 6 goats for 2 years, after which time the family pass 6 first born
offspring to another poor family - and the loan agreement continues - and then
of course to another family. We lend donkeys - essential when there is
no other transport and villages are remote - we train village girls as
midwives, primary health care workers (there is often no health care at all)
we train farmers in irrigation and improved planting techniques and provides
things like seeds, donkey ambulances, carts and ploughs. We also provide
tree seedlings from our two tree nurseries and train people to care for them.
What attributes do
you bring to the running of your organization that enables your team to work
towards a vision?
The
projects need commonsense, practical application, organisation - and
being good with people at all levels, from talking to villagers to negotiating
with Ministers of State. I hope I am good at these. It is also
essential to be a good communicator to inspire other people to help. I
cannot do this on my own! A sense of humour is essential and a great
deal of patience - the latter is very hard for me, but I am persevering!
I think righteous anger too is needed - you have to feel a sense of outrage at
conditions for children which were, and indeed are, known and yet ignored.
Villagers are out of sight and it is easy for the international community, and
indeed their compatriots, to forget them.
Would you regard your
vision for Kids for Kids as being
one that has developed with the input of others in the organization or as being
one that you have created and developed?
I
do have a vision, but it is now shared and developed by everyone involved -
from the little four year old at a school who asked me what happens when
a goat dies, to the State Minister of Health in Darfur who suggested our
village midwives should also be trained in first aid. There is room for
us all!
Do you see yourself
as a Self-appointed Leader, in that you have used your own initiative to define
a problem and developed a strategy that could bring about change?
Unfortunately
I do - and my biggest worry is that I must not be irreplaceable.
The need in Darfur is immense and Kids for Kids has to continue, whatever
happens to me.
What is your opinion
about leaders who work towards social change?
Please
show me some - I need them! If we could work together we would be a
force to be reckoned with.
From your personal
experience, what do you see as being needed to help children in
Darfur
? What do you see as inhibiting efforts to help people in
Darfur
?
The
obvious problem in Darfur today is the continuing, indeed escalating,
violence. This was preventable if action had been taken immediately -
and could be stopped now if the international community had the
determination based on self interest it had in Iraq. Sadly this is
not the case in Darfur, and debate has taken the place of action.
Meanwhile children are growing up in inexcusable conditions. When at
last security is secured then there is urgent need for water, rebuilding of
homes and basic livelihoods, education and healthcare. I am not asking
for big hospitals or smart schools - but the basic Child Rights the world
agreed so long ago, which do not exist in Darfur.
Who are the leaders
who inspire you in your leadership?
I
don't think of myself as a leader. Martin Luther King is however
an inspiration - and could not be more appropriate.
Back
to Kids for Kids Index
| 