Clare Hanbury

A Computer Game to Combat Childhood Obesity - Will it Work?

The British Heart Founbation  launched an online game today, the Yoobot. This lets children create a mini version of themselves. They then choose the look and surroundings of the Yoobot, which communicates with them via email and SMS. If left alone the Yoobot eats junk food all day, and eventually dies! Then the children can perform an autopsy to find out why!

The British Heart Foundation has done research which found that seven out of 10 eight- to 15-year-olds don't realise that eating badly can shorten their life.

Mike Knapton, director of prevention and care at the British Heart Foundation, said: "The Yoobot is an innovative way for children to explore the effects of eating a diet of junk food. The clock is ticking on the obesity time bomb and it is now more important than ever for children to be educated enough to take control of their diets."

So what role has a game in an overall strategy to combat obseity. In my view it is part of one element in a strategy that needs four elements....

UNICEF's web based Child and Youth Participation Guide

UNICEF's Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) have launched a web-based "Child and Youth Participation Resource Guide"

This guide is based on the initial publication by UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office in 2006 and has been revised and updated with new resources and materials. The resources in this guide as categorised under several broad themes/topics for easy reference and use and provides the user with a weblink or a pdf version of the document as available which can be easily downloaded.

The section on health is of particular interest to us at Young Solutions international and includes materials and articles developed by close colleagues and allies.

The Intolerance of Children in our Society

There is an unjustified and disturbing intolerance of children in the UK according to a shocking poll commissioned by Barnardo's and that came out yesterday.

The poll shows that society casually condemns all children, with more than half the population (54%) thinking that British children are beginning to behave like animals.

The public’s intolerance is also reflected in the British Crime Survey, which indicates that the public felt young people committed up to half of all crime when in actual fact young people are responsible for only 12% of crime.

Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey said: "It is appalling that words like ‘animal’, ‘feral’ and ‘vermin’ are used daily in reference to children.  Despite the fact that most children are not troublesome there is still a perception that today’s young people are a more unruly, criminal lot than ever before."

If we are not to run the risk of getting more of what we focus on, there is a need to shine a light on the many constructive and positive ways  in which young people contribute to our society.

In addition we need to find ways to enable young people to contribute more.

In my work in many developing countries, young people are valued for their tireless contribution to the family and the community.

My work has brought me together with youngsters whose knowledge and action around health have saved lives for example: knowing when water is safe to drink, knowing how to make water safer, checking that siblings observe basic hygiene rules, getting their siblings and friends to the clinics for immunisation, befriending children who are isolated by the stigma of relatives who have AIDS….the list could go on and on.

While the issues affecting young people’s health and well being in this country may be a little different what is not different is their ability and enthusiasm to change and improve things that affect them and those they care about…its time to give them a chance.

NOVEMBER 14TH 2008........Launch day has arrived!

Apologies to those waiting but AT LAST launch day is here. Fireworks to celebrate!

Today I am launching two websites and this weblog. The site links on the left!

My aim with Young Solutions international (YSi) is to share and develop tools for conducting effective participatory projects with young people (aged 8-18) on health and social justice issues. It is firmly rooted in the work I helped to develop during my six years at The Child-to-Child Trust. From  this work, I have grown new methods and techniques from the fields of coaching, mentoring and appreciative enquiry. My research has taken me to many places, to many books and to the feet of many inspirational people. YSi offers a free report, a handbook, training, mentoring and consultancy. Go have a look for the details of all that!

My aim with LifeskillsHandbooks.com is to (finally) make available lifeskills work that I have developed during the past eight years, to offer mentoring services to those developing life skills programmes in the field and to point to other useful resources. The mentoring service is proving highly successful with the first significant 3 year collaboration reaching its conclusion shortly with great results coming out of Sierra Leone (more on this to come!).   The Lifeskills Handbook is the first title to be made available from the website. It is a revised and updated version of a book for street educators commissioned by VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) and published by Macmillan in 2002.

The original handbook was popular and spawned a number of interesting projects that included a project with woman’s groups in the Philippines. It also led to the development of two further lifeskills handbooks which will be available from this website shortly.

The aim of this weblog is be a base camp for those who are interested in and following the progress of my work. In addition it will keep those that subscribe to it, up to date with new developments on my sites and links to people, resources and articles I discover on other sites. I have posted articles for you to take a look at in relation to lifeskills learning and the participation of young people.

Please subscribe and become a part of my community, comment on my blog and THANK-YOU for your visit!

Young people solving knife crime

Totally inspired today by Alexander Rose who was talking on the radio 4 midweek program. He is nineteen and saw his friend Eugene Attram killed by a gang in 2006. His cousin was stabbed the following year. He has recently won an Anne Frank award for his campaign against gun and knife crime, Stop (Solve This Ongoing Problem), using his skills in graphic design to make posters and T-shirts to promote his cause. He is also involved with the Battlefront project, in which young people use the internet to campaign about issues affecting their lives.

In his words...
'I was boiling inside and looked up to the sky and thought a life had gone for no reason... I just had to do something. I go round to schools and youth clubs talking to young people about the issues around gang culture. To make them think about what else is out there. To make them realise that they don’t have to join a gang or carry weapons. I want to raise awareness to educate young people to STOP carrying weapons. Friends and family members have died due to this issue. I decided I just had to do something. I turned to what I knew at the time, which was graphic design, and came up with a t-shirt design and a campaign called Solve This Ongoing Problem (STOP). I’m using positive fashion to fight the negative gangster image. I want to inspire others. I’m not special. Everyone can use what they have to do something. I’m telling you: positivity pays off. Talent + Belief = Success.

Knife Crime is fast becoming an everyday occurrence within the UK and it needs to be put to a stop and it needs to be stopped NOW! Official statistics are wrong. The actual figures of knife crime are below:
14,000 people get injured by a knife a year
38 people a day get stabbed
446 people that get stabbed are younger than 14

You can see Alex talking here....

Welcome to base camp!

...Here you'll find links to my websites, articles I have written, news about what’s going on in my work, links to others’ work and opinion pieces about things I’m reading, listening to and watching. My aim is to get you as interested and excited as I am about working alongside children to support them to improve their own health and well being and that of others they care about. I hope to show you why this is important and how you can do it well.

Does the language of rights alienate children's closest allies?

On 3rd October, a highly critical report was published by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. It accuses the UK Government of failing to meet international standards on the treatment of children. In June, the children's rights alliance for England (CRAE) reported on how miserably England is failing its children – this time by achieving just 10 of the 78 proposals laid out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

When I did my research into Children Rights in Health Care, the people closest to the front line, the teachers, school nurses GP’s and Paediatricians, felt that the framework of ‘rights’ was an inappropriate way to judge their work and the language of ‘rights’ made them immediately defensive. “If our systems are not upholding children’s rights in every way are our approaches and systems wrong” said one? Choices and decisions about children and their health care are incredibly complex and difficult – needing the utmost sensitivity. I did not find much ‘wrong’ with the work I encountered. Indeed the groups I met were among children's closest allies.

What are often lacking – (and this was also supported by my research) are the skills to engage and involve children so that they have a presence in decisions often made on their behalf. As my work in health education and spanning three decades has taught me, working with children and young people in a participatory way is challenging. Few systems or strategies support it. Our current school system works against it. Few organisations set up adequate training or support for staff at the front line. If we could find better ways of working WITH children and young people, we would not need all this fist-shaking, we would be respecting the humanity of individual children in all our decisions as part of the way we do things.