#TalkJustice Health Care

Kids #TalkJustice Access to Health Care

Access to health care is an issue that really affects everyone. Even when families have insurance they may lack funds for co-pays, or still be in need of secondary services like vision, dental, and specialists. Beyond debates, because there is probably no country that has found the one-hundred percent correct answer to access, how can we understand and support access to health care in our communities and globally. Globally the situation is even more desperate as access to the simplest care is out of reach for many.

Health Care Discussion Starters:

Help your family go deeper:

• The cost of health care is staggering… who can you help with this burden? Do you know families you can support?
• Discuss specific illnesses with children. Help them understand what might go into care, what special equipment you might need, how often you might have to visit the doctor.
• Talk about parts of world where you might have to walk miles and miles to get to a health clinic. If you are bringing a sick family member what challenges might that bring?
• Talk about needing glasses, but having no way to acquire them.
• In disasters how important is health care? What things change in moments of crisis?
• What might be different about doctors offices around the world?
• The disease of malaria can be prevented by a simple bed net, yet many do not have access to that. What other sicknesses might be prevented by something simple (clean water, sanitation, clinics.)
• Do you have a free health clinic in your area? Is there anyway you can support their efforts?
• How can your family take care of its own health?
• How do you think health care where you live compares to other places around the world?
• How can you support efforts to help people have access to health care?
• Do you think this might be an important cause for communities to think about?
• If you know someone going through an illness or has a chronic illness how could you support their family? How could you support a classmate?
• Talk about root causes of heath care disparities: race, local resources, location in the world, poverty, immigrant or refugee, women in parts of the world.

Kids Books about Health Care:

I Lost my Tooth in Africa by: Penda Diakite

Mimi’s Village By: Katie Smith Milway

Nest By: Esther Ehrlich

The Lemonade Club By: Patricia Polacco

The Fault in our Stars By: John Greene

The Heaven Shop By: Deborah Ellis

16 Ways to take Action: 

• My Plate Kids’ Place is a great website to visit. Talk about how you might donate healthy choices to your local food bank.
• Set up a pop can tab collection to support Ronald McDonald House.
• A list of donations commonly needed by Ronald McDonald Houses. (contact your local house to check for specific needs.)
• WIC: Early Entry into Dental Care provides a simple yet powerful solution to the problem of preventing dental disease in low income children. Contact your local WIC office to see how you can be involved.
• Operation Smile Resources (provides free surgeries to repair cleft lips, palates and other facial deformities in children.)
• Learn about Child ViSion groundbreaking adjustable glasses.
• Send a malaria fighting bed net through Nothing but Nets.
• If you are on a sports team consider a Sports for Net Event.
• Browse photos from Nothing but Nets to see their work around the world.
• Provide immunizations for children in the developing world through Shot@Life. 
• Ways to get involved in Alex’s Lemonade Stand (fighting childhood cancer)
• Make a chemo care kit from Pennies of Time.
• Shop St. Jude’s gift shop to support their research work.
• Use UNICEF lesson plans for health.
• Watch a video about Embrace Warmers that save the lives of newborn babies globally.
• At Smile Squared you buy a toothbrush and one is given to a child in need.

A Health Care Twitter list to follow.

Follow our About Proximity #TalkJustice Pinterest Board.

#TalkJustice Summer Serve Play Groups! Come over to our Facebook Event Page to learn more. Invite friends! We will be exploring topics and making a difference in community, using a series of books donated to us from CitizenKid. Hosted by About Proximity (that’s me) and my Mom, a public school family advocate for two decades.

What are your thoughts? 

 

 

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#TalkJustice: Clean Water

#TalkJustice: Clean Water  Last week we talked Hunger. Clean water is another great justice topic to start with for kids. They understand thirst. Beyond, thirst we can teach them that unclean water makes people sick. We can talk about water scarcity and how that affects everyone on the planet.

Whenever we talk to our kids about justice issues we can be positive, because there are so many ways we can help! Even though the topics can be heavy, we can make a difference, and that’s something to be excited about. Help your family go deeper:

• Do we use more than our share of water?
• Imagine using unclean water for laundry, showers, drinking, cleaning dishes.
• What dangers might occur trying to transport clean water to your home? Might it make you vulnerable? Would you have time to attend school?
• Without water could anything survive?
• More and more people face water scarcity. How could that affect everyone on the planet?
• If you had to walk thirty minutes to get clean water, how would you use water differently?

Kids Books About Clean Water: 

Clean Water for Elirose: by Ariah Fine 

A Long Walk to Water: by Linda Sue Parker

Ryan and Jimmy: by Herb Shoveller

One Well: by Rochelle Strauss

Mimi’s Village: by Katie Smith Milway

19 Ways to Take Action!

• Take the Can You Imagine quiz together from Ryan’s Well Foundation.
• Work through the 30 Ways to Conserve Water Worksheet from Ryan’s Well Foundation.
• Participate in World Water Day March 22
• Watch the video Water is our World. 
• Give a Birthday Gift of water through Water.org
• Watch numerous video from Water.org on their YouTube Channel
• Use Water.org curriculum PDFs in the home and classroom.
• Use the Water Project Lesson Plans for home or classroom.
• Challenge your family to take the Water Challenge. 
• Downloadable Kids Activity Booklets from Project Wet Water Education
• Use the H2O for Life STEM guide 
• Try the National Geographic Water Footprint Calculator together.
• Download a Prayer for Water Guide from Living Water International.
• 100 Ways to Use Your Water Wisely.
• Use the study guide Water Flows in Niger with World Renew for older children.
• Watch the Story of Bottle Water from the Story of Stuff.
• Watch What Clean Water means for Lusiya.
• View the Story of Water Photo Galleries from Blue Planet
• Learn more about Water Scarcity from The World Wildlife Federation

A Clean Water Twitter List to Follow.

Follow our About Proximity #TalkJustice Pinterest Board.

Introducing #TalkJustice Summer Serve Play Groups! Come over to our Facebook Event Page to learn more. We will be exploring topics and making a difference in community, using a series of books donated to us from CitizenKid. Hosted by About Proximity (that’s me) and my Mom, a public school family advocate for two decades.

I LOVE to hear from you! Did you try any hunger or clean water activities? What conversations came up in your family? 

Next Up: Education

Talk Justice: Hunger

Talk Justice: Hunger

Hunger is something most kids will understand. Everyone can relate the feeling of a hungry tummy from time to time. We can broaden our kids understanding of true hunger by helping them learn about the people around the world that feel those tummy rumbles and don’t have access to a snack or meal like most of us do.

Help your family go deeper:

• If you didn’t have dinner would it be hard to sleep that night?
• If you didn’t have breakfast would you have trouble concentrating in school?
• How would you feel if you didn’t have a lunch to bring to school?
• If you had a week where there wasn’t much food at home, would you begin to feel worried about having enough?

Talk about root causes of hunger:

• wars
• disasters
• climate change
• famine and floods
• joblessness
• rising food costs
• poverty
• inequality

Help older children understand common misconceptions about hunger:

• WIC in the United States helps with supplementing woman, infants and children, school lunch programs, school breakfast programs, and summer lunch programs.
• SNAP Myths and general information.

Whenever we talk to our kids about justice issues we can be positive, because there are so many ways we can help! Even though the topics can be heavy, we can make a difference, and that’s something to be excited about!

Kids Books About Hunger 

The Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by: Peter Menzel

Beatrice’s Goat by: Paige McBriar with Heifer International

One Hen by: Katie Smith Milway

The Good Garden by: Katie Smith Milway

 

21 Ways to Take Action!

• Host a No Kid Hungry Bake Sale
• Map the Meal Gap lets you look at hunger statistics for your county.
• Know where your town’s Food Pantry is located.
• Find a Feeding America Location near you and serve as a family (many distribute food monthly from church parking lots)
• Watch Lily, her Mom and No Kid Hungry 
• 10 Faces of Food Assistance with the World Food Programme Slideshow
• Bring Heifer International’s Read to Feed to your kids school.
• Read the World Ark Magazine together on-line or via app
• Watch the documentary film A Place at the Table
• Rice 2.0 quizzed on vocabulary and other subjects 10 grains of rice is donated for every correct answer.
• Watch the true story that inspired the Good Garden Maria’s Journey
• Watch the Story of Hungry. 
• A great list of Most Needed Food Pantry items; shop and donate together
• Cook a meal together for someone who is ill, a single mom, the elderly, a new parent or anyone in need.
• Deliver or mail a surprise grocery gift card to someone in a tough place.
• Participate in the Stone Soup Activity with Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
• Download the Cooking Matters Kids Handouts
• Download these activity and coloring sheets from Canadian Foodgrains Bank: staple foods, rain, livestock, Harold and the goat, Haleema’s Chapattis, food assistance, disasters, deserts, Tanisha and changing weather, hunger facts, and even more educational resources here.
• Try the World Renew Feed Your Fish App to help world hunger.
• Use the great resources from Food for Thought from Sesame Street for younger kids.
• Download a world hunger map from the World Food Programme here.

We have a new Pinterest board called Kids #TalkJustice where I will be pinning many of the resources featured in this series.

Do you twitter? Here is a Hunger List to follow.

I really hope to hear from you all week long! Tell us about your conversations! What resources did you try? What did your kids teach you? 

Next Week… Clean Water and Summer Justice Play Groups.

Talk Justice

 

It’s been a long winter hasn’t it? So long. I’m excited for spring and the new hope it brings to our hearts. I’m also so happy to begin a new series called Talk Justice!

My friend Amy Sullivan, writer of the amazing When More is not Enough, sparked thoughts about talking justice with our kids a few months ago when we were having a phone date. In the right context walking beside children and teaching them about justice issues from a young age, shapes them to be people who understand, empathize, serve, and love others.

 

I tried to put it off.

 

Then a little volume came to my mailbox to be reviewed. If you find this letter, by Hannah Brencher. She was featured in our Craft for a Cause Issuu magazine! As the founder of the World Needs More Love Letters, the book is a beautiful unfolding of her journey to crafting love letters to strangers and leaving them all over New York City. Her little dream grew into something so much bigger than herself, and millions have been touched by the love letter movement. Learn more at her website.

 

Hannah had this struggle I know well.

She longed for God to use her fully, but she didn’t feel good enough.

God used her anyway.

 

Do small things. On repeat. And think about other people. ~Hannah Brencher

 

That is what we are going to do each week.

 

I hope you will join me here on Mondays, for the next three months, to Talk Justice. Not just for ourselves, but for the generation we are raising up. They can handle proximity.

I’m really excited about so many things. (I’ll keep them a secret for now, but especially about Summer Serve Play Groups with the Citizen Kid Book Series given to About Proximity.)

 

Also, you are good enough. My love letter to you… I hope every time I write.