Celebrating Global Work Party with the Street Children of Pakistan on 10/10/10

This 10/10/10 World Vision Pakistan (WVP) will join hands with the 350 to celebrate Global Work Party in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by engaging the most vulnerable street children to create mass awareness on climate change and advocate with the world to seek its solutions.

On 10/10/10, the most vulnerable street children from the Pakistan community, with whom WV is working to empower them as agents of change, will inform the world about the increasing impacts of Climate Change on our people, specially on children and will demand for a strong action.

Pakistan is experiencing the worse impact of climate change and extreme weather condition. More than 20 million population of Pakistan, including 50% children are affected from the massive flooding and huge displacement. The unexpected heavy monsoon rains and flooding killed more than 2000 innocent people while thousands of the children and their families are suffering from the absence of shelter, food, drinking water and health facilities. Children, besides their immediate needs such as shelter, food and care, are not only out of their schools but are also at risk to exploitation and abuses. WVP, through its flood response, initially to the 240,000 affected people in the three provinces of Pakistan aims to contribute in the efforts of the humanitarian organizations to help children and their families come back to the life of safety and dignity.

Unfortunately, majority of the people in Pakistan are unaware about the basic science of climate change, its causes and possible solutions. They don’t know how much it is important to keep the concentration of greenhouse gases at the level of 350 ppm in atmosphere (which is already 390ppm) and keep the average temperature increase below 2 degree C to avoid natural disasters and extreme events. People in Pakistan are mostly unaware of the fact that climate change and extreme events are because of the global environmental pollution done by human activities like burning of fossil fuel, deforestation etc.

WVP, along with 350 will mark 10/10/10 as a full day celebration for Global Work Party by engaging the street children in Pakistan. WVP work with the children at risk and provides them different capacity building, health, education and recreational facilities in its Drop In Center (DIC) in Rawalpindi, Pakistan with the participation of their parents and care givers and mainstream them into development process. On 10/10/10 these street children will perform different awareness raising and recreational activities on climate change like role plays, tablue along with the special children of minorities group, display of key messages and banners, paintings and exhibition of different crafts made of re-use and recycled material by the street children. These children will also participate in the event where the employees of the city district government Rawalpindi and the members of WVP’ Community Support Groups will organize cleanliness of a garbage dumping point in the Rawalpindi city.

WVP and 350 believe that on 10/10/10, these most vulnerable street children of Pakistan will play a role of champions in creating mass awareness on climate change. This day, the street children from WVP’ DIC will give a very strong message to the world for taking firm actions and protect the lives of vulnerable children and their families from the worse impacts of climate change.