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Stars Impact Award Winners at Kensington Palace.
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Credit: Sam Phelps
A boy sleeps during the afternoon siesta at the Samu Social shelter in Dakar.
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Credit: Jimmy Adriko / Majority World
A girl washes her hands using a ‘Tippy Tap’ – which encourages safer handwashing practices – outside her family’s clean pit latrine in Busia, Uganda.
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Training at the IkamvaYouth branch at Zolani centre in Nyanga
Three African charities from South Africa, Sénégal and Uganda have won awards at the London-based Stars Foundation's Impact Awards which was held at the Kensington Palace London.
Recipients were selected in recognition of their excellence in the provision of frontline services to disadvantaged children.
The winning charities are: Samu Social Sénégal, Water School Uganda and IkamvaYouth, South Africa.
Protection: Samu Social Sénégal
Dakar-based Samu Social Sénégal is the first organisation to run a 24-hour shelter support and outreach service to some of the 50,000 children forced to live and beg on the streets each day in Sénégal. Shelter, food, recreation and educational activities are provided in addition to medical experts, clinical psychologists and social workers being accessible to children all day, every day. Mobile Outreach Teams work on the streets night and day and a Mobile Family Reunion Team supports children able and willing to return home. Since 2003, Samu Social Sénégal has expanded to five regions in Sénégal, supported close to 5,000 children and young people, distributed 220,000 meals and reunited 680 children with their families.
WASH: Water School Uganda
Water School Uganda (WSU) is selected for empowering communities to access safe drinking water using simple and sustainable water treatment technology. With more than 14,000 Ugandan children dying every year from diarrhoea, WSU helps to construct more resilient home compounds and sanitation facilities. Since March 2010, WSU has installed more than 2,500 Tippy Taps – structures that encourage sanitary hand-washing – and constructed more than 1,000 clean pit latrines at household level, increasing latrine coverage from 63% to 78% across eight counties in the Busia district. Busia’s Masafu Hospital confirmed a 50% reduction of dysentery, typhoid and diarrhoea cases in schoolchildren and communities where WSU have worked.
Education: IkamvaYouth, South Africa
South Africa based charity, IkamvaYouth stood out for its work in predominantly poor, black South African communities and townships. Tutoring is provided in academic subjects and life skills, such as HIV awareness and career guidance to empower disadvantaged youth to pull themselves and each other out of poverty to secure more positive, productive and dignified futures. The model draws on local university students and Ikamva alumni to tutor in township schools across the country, also acting as mentors and role models for students. IkamvaYouth’s matriculation results have far-exceeded national averages annually since 2005. This is particularly significant given that learners attend generally poor performing township schools. In 2012, volunteers provided the equivalent of more than three million rand (US$300,000) in tutoring, career guidance, mentoring, computer literacy training and workshop facilitation to more than 700 learners. Thanks to a contribution from Marple Foundation, IkamvaYouth will receive an additional US$30,000 in unrestricted funding.
Over the years, the Stars Foundation has supported 58 outstanding organisations working in 24 countries, reaching two million people. Founding Patrons include former President Bill Clinton and Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.
Muna Wehbe, Chief Executive of the Stars Foundation said: “The Impact Awards recognise and reward outstanding local organisations working on the frontline in the fight against poverty and child mortality. We hope other donors will see that flexible funding for effective charities puts decision-making in the hands of the real development experts, unlocking their potential to become stronger, more sustainable and more able to improve the lives of the vulnerable children in their communities.”
Stars Founding Chairman Amr A. Al-Dabbagh noted that: “Stars Foundation is committed to reaching 20 million children by 2020. The only way we are going to do that is by supporting ever-larger numbers of local organisations doing incredible work on the ground. The 2013 Impact Award winners are beacons of effective practice, offering inspiration to other charities, and to us all.”
The Stars Impact Awards are made in four categories (Health, Education, Protection and Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) across two geographic regions (Africa-Middle East & Asia-Pacific). The 2014 Impact Awards will also be open to eligible charities in Latin-America and the Caribbean.
Further information about the winning charities are available at: www.samusocialsenegal.com / www.waterschool.com/uganda / www.ikamvayouth.org