helping an orphan essay

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Orphanage — How to Help Orphans: Making a Meaningful Difference

How to Help Orphans: Making a Meaningful Difference

Categories: Orphanage

About this sample

Words: 579 |

Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 579 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

Expert in: Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

7 pages / 3092 words

3 pages / 1257 words

2.5 pages / 1213 words

2 pages / 987 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Orphanage

Stepping into the world of an orphanage is like entering a realm where resilience and hope thrive amidst challenges. The experience of visiting an orphanage is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming, offering a profound insight [...]

In this assignment I will discuss one social policy; Safeguarding children and Young People (July 2014). This policy discusses the importance of safeguarding children and how important it is for service providers to be aware [...]

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Offred, the main character lives in Gilead, a dystopia where fertile women are solely used to reproduce children. Known as handmaids, these women are confined into prison-like [...]

A relationship between mother and child is very dynamic, where the mother teaches her son to set boundaries and act appropriately, which then becomes better partners and friends of women. But when mother and son share this [...]

There are many reasons that parents should get involved in their children’s school. Students who have concerned and involved parents tend to get better grades. When a parent asks questions about homework and assignments, [...]

The aim of this research proposal is to gain an insight into how men feel about the narratives of fatherhood and masculinities in family studies. What is a father? What does it mean to be a man? At present the general consensus [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Essay on Orphanage

Students are often asked to write an essay on Orphanage in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Orphanage

What is an orphanage.

An orphanage is a place where children without parents are taken care of. It is like a big family home where children live together.

Life in an Orphanage

In an orphanage, children get food, shelter, education, and love. They play, learn, and grow together. They also celebrate festivals and birthdays.

The Importance of Orphanages

Orphanages play a crucial role in society. They provide a safe place for children who have lost their parents. They also help children to grow up in a caring environment.

Orphanages are essential as they provide love, care, and support to children who need it the most.

250 Words Essay on Orphanage

Introduction.

Orphanages are institutions designed to house children who have lost their parents or guardians, or whose families are unable to care for them. These establishments are critical in providing a safe haven for vulnerable children, offering them shelter, food, education, and emotional support.

The Role and Importance of Orphanages

Orphanages serve a pivotal role in society. They are the backbone of support for children who have been orphaned or abandoned, providing them with a semblance of a normal life. They not only cater to the basic needs of these children but also focus on their overall development, ensuring they grow into responsible and independent adults.

Challenges Faced by Orphanages

Despite their noble intentions, orphanages face numerous challenges. These include limited resources, overcrowding, and sometimes even allegations of abuse or neglect. The children, despite having their basic needs met, often lack personalized care and attention, which can affect their emotional and psychological development.

Reforming the Orphanage System

There is a growing consensus that the traditional orphanage model needs reform. Emphasis is being placed on family-based care, where children are placed in foster families or adopted, rather than being raised in institutional settings. This approach is believed to offer a more nurturing environment for children to grow and thrive.

While orphanages play a crucial role in safeguarding the welfare of orphaned and vulnerable children, it is essential to continually reassess and improve their functioning. By focusing on reforms and promoting family-based care, we can ensure that every child receives the love, care, and opportunities they deserve.

500 Words Essay on Orphanage

An orphanage is a residential institution dedicated to the care of orphans—children whose biological parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them. Orphanages have been in existence for centuries, providing refuge and protection for vulnerable children. However, the concept of orphanages has evolved significantly over time, influenced by societal changes, policy shifts, and advancements in child psychology.

The Historical Context of Orphanages

Orphanages were initially established as a response to societal crises such as wars, epidemics, and natural disasters, which left many children parentless. During the Middle Ages, religious institutions often took on this role, providing basic care and moral instruction. By the 19th and early 20th centuries, large, institutional orphanages became common, particularly in Western societies. However, these were often characterized by overcrowded conditions, strict regimes, and a lack of individual attention to children’s needs.

Modern Perspective on Orphanages

Today, the traditional concept of an orphanage has been largely replaced by alternative child care systems. This shift has been driven by a growing recognition of the importance of family-based care for children’s development. Research has shown that institutional care can have detrimental effects on children’s physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Consequently, many countries have moved towards deinstitutionalization, favoring foster care, adoption, and kinship care.

The Role of Orphanages in Developing Nations

Despite the global trend towards deinstitutionalization, orphanages continue to play a significant role in many developing nations. In these contexts, they often serve not only orphans but also children from impoverished families who cannot afford to care for them. These institutions face numerous challenges, including limited resources, inadequate staff training, and a lack of oversight and regulation.

Orphanages and Child Rights

The role of orphanages must be considered within the broader context of child rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the right of every child to grow up in a family environment. This has implications for the operation of orphanages, which must strive to provide a nurturing and protective environment for children, while also working towards family reunification or alternative family-based care wherever possible.

In conclusion, while orphanages have played a significant role in child care throughout history, their function and operation have evolved significantly. Today, the focus is on ensuring that all children, including those in orphanages, have the opportunity to grow up in a loving, secure, and supportive environment. Despite the challenges, it is crucial to continue advocating for the rights of children and striving for improvements in the way we care for our most vulnerable populations.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Online Classes
Essay on Novel
Essay on Niti Aayog

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

What Are the Benefits of Helping Orphanages and Orphans?

As travel becomes more and more international, Helping orphanages and orphans has become very popular. Hundreds of schools, NGOs, churches, and mission groups, as well as orphanages themselves, can arrange placements.

Helping orphanages and orphans can promote health, literacy, education, and children’s empowerment. When you help an orphanage, you can say that you have “transformed the world and made a positive impact on people’s lives.”

Take a break from your everyday routine to learn more about yourself, gain a renewed perspective about your life, and plan for your future. Live every moment to the fullest and create lifelong memories with people of all ages.

Here are some benefits of Helping orphanages and orphans

1. Learn about yourself

It’s not all about giving back to the community, though. Volunteering can actually teach you invaluable lessons.

When you help orphanages and orphans, you have the opportunity to discover aspects of yourself that you did not realize you had.

Learning new skills such as how to search for affordable flights to your volunteering partner’s country is a big part of the helping orphanages and orphans experience!

2. Advantages To Health

It is well known that volunteering is beneficial to health. So get the benefits of volunteer work on a mental and physical level.

You will become more confident.
Fulfill your purpose in life
Defend against depression and relieve stress
Having the satisfaction of helping others
Stabilize your emotions

You will develop a healthy sense of self-worth and shape your future career path when working on a volunteer project that you are passionate about and suits your skillset.

3. It helps you improve your skills

One child can teach or interact with you so much that it is amazing. Through the lessons you learn at orphanages and activities like cooking and teaching, you better understand the world and learn to see it from different perspectives.

By stepping outside your normal routine and trying something new, volunteering will help you expand your skillset.

It is possible to develop new hobbies, interests, and passions when you regularly try new and interesting experiences.

Frequently, helping orphanages and orphans include volunteer training, allowing you to gain new skills and devote your time to helping people not only within your community but near and far.

4. Enhance your mental health

It is also beneficial to our mental health to helping orphanages and orphans. The psychological and physical health benefits of everything described above, from exercise to fellowship with others, are proven.

To fulfill this need can make us feel happier since we live in a world where people naturally want to help one another.

5. Community involvement

You can feel a greater sense of belonging by keeping up with other people regularly. You can boost your sense of belonging and improve your self-esteem when you become an active member of your local community when you do so.

Being active in helping orphanages and orphans can open your mind to other viewpoints, help you become better accustomed to society, and help you prevent the detachment that is generally felt in modern society.

You can meet new people in your community by volunteering in orphanages and orphanages if you are in a new place.

It will also provide you with the opportunity to discover things about the region you probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise.

6. Provide career opportunities

By volunteering, you can enhance your CV by learning time management, interpersonal skills, and collaboration skills.

By developing the self-confidence to interact with others in a professional setting and following routines outside your own, employers are more inclined to consider you.

An employer is often looking for specific skills in applicants, and having examples of volunteer work on your CV will help you ace an interview.

Orphanages and orphans are a fulfilling experience, and people can travel and volunteer because of the multitude of factors involved in helping.

Regardless of why you want to help orphanages, you will find volunteer or internship projects that will suit your needs and enable you to experience the world in new and amazing ways.

Every individual that has contributed to Orphans in Need allows us to maintain our efforts. We welcome those who would like to join our mission of providing better futures to the less fortunate.

Share the joy

Saving the future, one orphan at a time.

Our Mission
Guiding Principles
Our History
Uganda Project
Acenda Project
25 Ways to Help
7 Days of Nothing
Sponsor an Orphan
Step 1: Set Your Goals
Step 2: Choose Your Sacrifices

25 Ways to Help an Orphan

Participate in “ 7 Days of Nothing ” and donate the money you save to help orphans. Encourage others to participate by sharing your experience on the Families for Orphans – Seven Days of Nothing Facebook Group page or emailing your story to us.
Share your orphan story. If you have had a positive experience with adoption or helping orphans, share your story on our website. Click here for more details.
Consider adopting a child or becoming a foster care family.
Join our Facebook Group and encourage others to join as well.
Hold an “Orphan Awareness Night” in your home and show the Families for Orphans documentary, “Best Interest of the Child” and request donations.
Donate airline miles to Families for Orphans to help defray travel costs for our project managers as they travel to arrange medical care or help for orphans. Email us to set this up.
Arrange with Wal-Mart or another store to set up a table where you can encourage people to participate in “ 7 Days of Nothing .”
Organize a special sports-related fundraiser, such as a “Hoops for Orphans” event where children get sponsors to donate a specific amount for every basket they make at the event.
During the holiday season, request that those who traditionally give you gifts donate to help orphans instead.
Instead of sending a gift to someone, donate the amount of the gift you would have given to help an orphan and inform them of the donation being made in their name.
Organize a “Service Auction for Orphans,” asking family members and friends to donate a service to be auctioned off with proceeds going to help orphans.
Organize a “Dollars for Orphans” drive. Set a week where you ask everyone you come in contact with for $1 to help an orphan. Explain that most orphans live on less than $1 each day.
Hold a “Birthday Party for an Orphan,” and invite your friends to come and each bring $10 to donate to help an orphan who has probably never had a birthday party.
Contact local businesses, family members and friends to match your donation to help orphans.
Organize a “Walk-a-thon for Orphans.”
Do an “eBay Scavenger Hunt,” creating a list of items that could easily be sold on eBay and then asking neighbors and friends to donate items from a list. Then auction the items off on eBay and donate the money earned to support orphans.
Encourage your school to conduct a “Dollars for Orphans” project where each child is invited to bring in $1 to help an orphan. if you would like our help to match up a school with a specific orphanage or project, contact us for more details.
Organize friends and family to do a “Car Wash for Orphans.”
Ask your pastor if you can pass around a “Dollars for Orphans” collection plate to gather donations from members of your congregation.
Ask your church to sponsor an orphan or project.
Contact your dentist, doctor, orthodontist, chiropractor or anyone you regularly pay for services, and ask if they will donate a portion of your payments to help an orphan.
Email your friends and families the link to “ Compelling Orphan Storie s ” so they will be motivated to help orphans as well.
Put a link to familiessavingorphans.org on your business, family, or personal website and invite people to learn about the needs or orphans.
Contact families you know who have adopted or taken in foster children, and send them a link to familiesfororphans.org . Invite them to share their stories with us.
Dedicate a percentage of the profits of your business each month to Families for Orphans and advertise your support of this project.

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

High contrast
About UNICEF
Children in South Asia
Where we work
Regional Director
Goodwill ambassador
Work with us
Press centre

Search UNICEF

Volunteering in orphanages, by volunteering in orphanages, many well-intentioned tourists are supporting an industry that tears families apart and exploits children..

If you’re thinking about donating your time and money to an orphanage in South Asia, you may be contributing to separating children and their families and, worse, putting children at risk.

Across the world, the popularity of volunteering programmes in orphanages is increasing. These types of programmes - though often supported by well-meaning tourists - can fuel human trafficking, trap children in inappropriate environments and harm their development.

Shockingly, many children in orphanages are not orphans. Instead, they have been separated from their families to attract fee-paying volunteers. In Nepal for example, it’s estimated that 85 per cent of all children in orphanages have at least one living parent.1

Children belong with their families, not institutions. Torn away from their parents and caregivers, young children quickly develop bonds with volunteers and may feel abandoned when they leave. Without stringent background checks of volunteers and orphanage staff, children growing up in orphanages are also targets for sexual exploitation and abuse. There is also increasing evidence that growing up in institutions can stop a child’s brain from fully developing - with irreversible impacts.2 Children in orphanages are often forced to undertake certain activities to please the donors.

You may also be violating several laws by volunteering in orphanages. In many countries, volunteering requires special visa and work permits. In Nepal, for example, it is illegal to volunteer on a tourist visa.

The family is a nurturing and caring environment and is the ideal place to raise a child. Genuine orphans can be successfully reunified with extended family members such as uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins or older brothers and sisters or other families.

If you aren’t a qualified professional, please reconsider volunteering with children - especially in orphanages and other institutions . If you are a skilled professional such as social worker or psychologist, look for reputable programs that support and promote family and community-based care and reintegration of children into family and community-based care.

If you want to donate to help children, you may want to consider supporting family-based care services. Keeping families together is better and cheaper than keeping children in institutions.

Sadly, unless we raise awareness about the impact of volunteering in orphanages, this issue will only grow and harm more children. Please share this with your friends, family and anyone you think might mistakenly get involved in an industry that separates families and exploits children for profit.

UNICEF helps protect children from the exploitation, abuse and violence of the dangers of the orphanage industry by:

Working with governments and local organisations to stop the reliance on orphanages among families
Encouraging tourists and volunteers not to lend financial and physical support to orphanages
Helping keep families together by facilitating education and community support
Supporting legal reform and monitoring of care institutions to prevent unnecessary placement of children in institutions

1. UNICEF Nepal, Volunteering in Nepal ? What you should know before volunteering in an orphanage in Nepal

2. Barth, R., Institutions vs. Foster Homes: The Empirical Base for the Second Century of Debate. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC, School of Social Work, Jordan Institute for Families, 2002.

Last update: November 2019

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List

The psychosocial wellbeing of orphans: The case of early school leavers in socially depressed environment in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Busisiwe ntuli.

Department of Public Health, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria, South Africa

Mathildah Mokgatle

Sphiwe madiba, associated data.

All relevant data are available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzgrc .

The emergence of a large population of orphaned youth in sub-Saharan Africa is due to the natural maturity of orphaned children. Research indicates that orphaned youth face more negative psychosocial challenges than their younger counterparts do. Furthermore, these challenges are intensified for early school leavers. This paper describes how experiencing maternal death affects the psychosocial wellbeing of orphaned youth who left school before completing high school.

An exploratory qualitative study was undertaken among purposively sampled orphaned youth using in-depth interviews with open-ended questions. Fifty participants were recruited through social workers, community based organisations, and tribal authorities in a rural local municipality of Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. All data analyses were performed using NVivo10, following an inductive thematic approach.

The narratives with the participants revealed that they live in a socially depressed environment and are subjected to extreme poverty characterised by frequent hunger. Furthermore, they do not enjoy family support and when they live with their extended families, they experience ill treatment and unsympathetic gestures. The death of their mothers has made a negative psychological impact on their psychosocial wellbeing, resulting in the development of internalising depressive symptoms. They suffer from emotional distress and prolonged bereavement characterised by perpetual yearning for the mother and, they resort to silence as a coping strategy. The study established that they were forced to leave school early for a variety of reasons. However, leaving school early became a major stressor and contributed to their negative psychosocial wellbeing.

Maternal death has a negative impact on the psychosocial wellbeing of the participants even after they have crossed the 18 years threshold of orphan hood. Yearning for their mothers negatively affected their ability to develop coping strategies, which led to isolation, sadness, hopelessness, lack of peace, and fear of an uncertain future. The lack of routine screening for mental health in schools and other settings in South Africa increases their vulnerability to undiagnosed depression. The school health services should develop interventions for mental health screening in schools. For early school leavers, relevant policies should consider the continuation of support through NGOs and community networks.

Introduction

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is experiencing a high number of orphans due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS [ 1 ]. The long-term outcome of the HIV/AIDS crisis is the emergence of a large population of orphaned youth or young adults due to the natural maturing or aging process of orphaned children [ 2 ]. The United Nations defines youth as persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years [ 3 ]. In 2011, UNICEF’s estimations indicated that 17.3 million children younger than 18 years of age lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS related illnesses, and about 90% of these orphans were living in SSA [ 3 ]. In 2018, there were approximately 3.8 million orphans because of HIV/AIDS related deaths in South Africa [ 4 ].

Orphans have always relied on the extended family as a traditional support system for their care, but this has changed because household structures have been drastically altered by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The clan network has collapsed and the kin support system has gradually diminished [ 5 – 8 ]. Consequently, communities and families find themselves ill-equipped to cope with the ever-increasing number of orphans in countries experiencing high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, high levels of poverty, and HIV/AIDS related stigma [ 8 , 9 ]. Due to limited resources, poverty, and the high number of HIV/AIDS related deaths, the extended family is unable to cope with this role and finds it difficult to integrate the orphans into their own families as this may deplete their own resources [ 8 , 10 ]. Furthermore, UNICEF maintains that the successive loss of multiple family members to HIV/AIDS has led to the gradual erosion extended family safety net of the children [ 5 ].

The collapse of the network and kin support system has given rise to the existence of child and youth headed households [ 8 ], a common and integral part of South Africa society [ 7 ]. Typically, in a child or youth headed household, the main caregiver is younger than 18 years of age. Usually this is the older sibling who takes on the responsibilities commonly assumed by parents to take care of younger siblings after the death of the mother or both parents. van der Mark [ 7 ] speaks of the ‘sibling headed households’ concept and argues that some families are being headed by siblings who have turned 18 years and are officially no longer regarded as child headed households anymore. Other researchers refer to this concept as a ‘youth headed household [ 11 ]. Nevertheless, in many parts of SSA, orphans continue being cared for by elderly female caregivers, particularly maternal grandparents [ 12 , 13 ]. The presence of extended families enables orphans to receive support and withstand severe psychological stress [ 14 ].

The literature indicates that orphans experience emotional and psychological distress following the deaths of their parents, which leads to their poverty, their exploitation in the homes of their relatives, and their loss of educational opportunities [ 15 ]. The emerging evidence suggests that older orphans are at risk of poorer psychosocial outcomes [ 11 ], as the negative mental health outcomes amongst orphans are maintained and worsen into later adolescence [ 16 ]. Furthermore, older orphans have higher risk of school dropout which is heightened by lack of kin support [ 17 – 19 ]. Different reasons for the high risk of school dropout are documented. For example, being a maternal orphan renders a child nutritionally vulnerable and susceptible to school dropout [ 20 ], and when orphans are in child or youth headed households they are more likely to suffer negative impacts on their educational needs [ 7 , 21 , 22 ]. Older siblings in particular drop out of school to find employment in order to take care of the younger siblings [ 8 , 13 , 23 , 24 ].

The death of a parent gives rise to emotional distress. The orphans are susceptible to long-term psychological problems including depression, anger, anxiety, and feelings of sadness, and are inclined to withdraw and self-isolate. These psychological problems are brought about by their failure to deal with their sense of loss [ 17 , 25 – 27 ]. Those living in child or youth headed households experience hidden grief manifested as a prolonged bereavement [ 28 ]. One other key challenge and source of distress to orphans heading households is to adjust to the role of taking care of their siblings unprepared and with no kin support [ 29 , 30 ].

Much focus has been given to the challenges of orphans in child or youth headed households depicting them as vulnerable due to HIV/AIDS [ 25 ]. Lethale and Pillay [ 31 ] argue that literature tends to portray a bleak picture of the experiences of orphans in these households even though evidence suggests that some display strong resilience in their academic and personal lives despite the odds. Resilience is defined as the positive adjustment in the context of significant adversity, or risk factors that are known to be associated with negative outcomes [ 32 ]. In the context of orphans, resilience is a positive adaptation or a useful weapon for survival following parental death [ 33 ]. There’s evidence that, although orphans in child or youth headed households experience lack of food security, poverty, and strained extended family relations, they are resilient and become independent agents and decision makers in their own right [ 34 , 35 ].

Previous work on orphans in South Africa has focussed on describing their material needs and living arrangements [ 36 ]. Literature on the well-being of orphaned youth, in particular, is scanty. Moreover, the emergence of a large population of orphaned youth or young adults due to the natural maturing process of orphaned children [ 2 ] calls for an urgent need to understand their unique experiences. Notwithstanding that orphaned youth face more negative challenges than their younger counterparts do because they have been stripped of eligibility for the interventions available for younger orphans [ 11 ]. For example, in South Africa, the social grant system is withdrawn from HIV orphans when they reach the threshold of 18 years despite their precarious circumstances such as being the head of their households. Furthermore, research has established a high risk of school dropout among this population [ 17 – 19 ].

This paper describes how experiencing maternal death affects the psychosocial wellbeing of orphans who dropped out of school after the death of their mothers as informed by their own narratives. There is a need to understand how orphan-hood impacts on their psychosocial wellbeing in order to develop context based interventions to address their wellbeing. This is crucial in a country with 3.8 million HIV/AIDS orphans, and child and youth headed households [ 8 ] being a common and integral part of society [ 7 ].

Study design

This manuscript is derived from a concurrent exploratory mixed-method community-based doctoral study of the lead author, conducted in the Chris Hani local municipality of Mpumalanga Province. The purpose of the main study was to explore the school attainment of orphans, in order to inform the development of an intervention to improve the school outcomes of orphans in secondary schools. The reason for adopting a mixed method (MM) approach, as explained by Ivankova and Greer [ 37 ], was to provide more comprehensive answers to the questions posed by the researcher. The qualitative approach allowed for deeper understanding of the meanings associated with subjective well-being from the perspectives of participants. We adopted the definition of Casas [ 38 ] where wellbeing is broadly defined as encompassing dynamic processes and the degree to which an individual is fully functioning in society. Goodman [ 39 ] recommend that studies aimed at determining subjective well-being include both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Setting and population

Thembisile Hani local municipality, the study setting, is one of the six sub-districts of Nkangala District in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. The municipality comprises rural villages with poor infrastructure such as poor roads and sanitation. The unemployment rate is high at 37% compared to the national average of 32% with youth unemployment sitting at 50% [ 40 ].

The study population consisted of orphans in school and those who dropped out of school prematurely. UNICEF defines an orphan as a child under 18 years of age who has lost one or both parents to any cause of death [ 41 ]. Mpumalanga Province is among the provinces that have high rates of orphans and bear a large burden of care for orphans. The province recorded 16.5% of children as orphans who have lost a mother, a father or both parents. The target population for the study was maternal orphans and this category make up 3.5% of the total number of orphans in the province [ 4 ]. We used the provincial data because there are no specific statistics for the study setting. As such, the researches recruited the participants with the help of social workers, community based organisations, tribal authorities, community workers, and research assistants with a substantial understanding of the study setting and the context thereof. The participants were recruited if they were; 1) maternal orphans, 2) 18 years and older, and 3) had dropped out of school at the time of the interview. A maternal orphan is defined as a child under 18 years of age who has lost a mother to any cause of death [ 41 ]. The Department of Basic Education in South Africa defines dropout as leaving school before completing a given grade in a given school year [ 42 ]. The operational definition for school dropout in this study is “Leaving school early before completing high school (12 th Grade)”. In South Africa, approximately 6.5% of learners drop out in 9th grade, and about 11% drop out in 10 th and 11 th [ 43 ].

Data collection and measures

The first author (BN) and a team of research assistants (research team) collected data over a period of nine months between March and November 2016. At the time of data collection, the research assistants already possessed skills in carrying out interviews. They obtained their skills through training received from the Department of Public Health, where the lead author had registered for her doctoral study. However, prior to commencing with data collection, the authors were engaged in the training of the research assistants to understand the study objectives, the data collection tool and the process of data collection. In addition, the inclusion criteria for the prospective participants was also explained to them.

The research team collected data using in-depth interviews (IDIs) with a semi-structured interview schedule with open-ended questions. The interview schedule was translated into two local languages, IsiZulu and Sepedi, which were used during the interviews. The researcher team asked the participants about their schooling experiences before they dropped out of school. The questions focused on; 1) challenges to attend school on a regular basis, 2) support received from the school and community to attend classes, 3) reasons for absenteeism, 4) suggestions on how the school can assist orphans to attend school regularly, 5) what would have made it possible to complete school, and 6) their reasons for dropping out of school.

The research team conducted 50 in-depth interviews in settings including the homes of the participants, the offices of the NGOs, and offices of the tribal authorities. The team conducted all the interviews in private after obtaining informed consent from the participants and consent to record the interviews. Each interview lasted for about 45 minutes. Data saturation guided the collection of data, and thus the interviews ended when no new information emerged from subsequent interviews. Each participant received refreshment after the interview and a food parcel to take home.

Data analysis

A thematic approach guided the data analysis [ 44 ]. All the authors (BN, MM and SM) were involved in the analysis to reduce bias and enhance the credibility of the findings. The research assistant involved in the data collection transcribed the audio files verbatim to so that the findings reflected the meanings as described by the participants [ 45 ]. The research team later translated the transcripts into English, and proofread and formatted them for analysis. A few transcripts were repeatedly read by individual authors to familiarise themselves with the depth and the breadth of the data [ 46 ]. In order to identify codes and themes, the three authors independently coded a few transcripts and then compared the application of coding for inter coder reliability.

This was followed by the development and refinement of the codebook. The authors held several sessions to refine and revise the codes. Once consensus was reached on the definitions of codes, themes, and sub-themes, the transcripts were imported into NVivo version 10, a qualitative analysis software package [ 47 ], which was used to manage the data and assist in the application of codes to the remaining transcripts. In applying coding, the authors read the transcripts to identify the themes occurring most frequently across transcripts and revised the emergent themes prior to the identification of the final themes and sub-themes. This approach enabled the researchers to identify, analyse and report patterns or themes in the data [ 46 ].

Trustworthiness

The authors used a number of strategies to ensure trustworthiness. The lead author used reflexivity as a strategy to attain credibility by setting aside all preconceived ideas about the phenomenon under investigation as outlined in Gearing [ 48 ]. The lead author engaged in continuous peer debriefing with MM and SM as supervisors of the study in the form of frequent meetings through the project life. In addition, all the authors engaged with data analysis and interpretation. Other strategies to ensure credibility included; interviewing the participants in their own language, investigator triangulation, and transcribing the interviews verbatim to reflect the views of the participants. Lastly, the lead author kept an audit trail of the procedure and processes followed in the performance of the study [ 44 ].

The study received ethical clearance from the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University Research and Ethics Committee (SMUREC/H/68/2015: PG). Participation was voluntary and the participants provided written informed consent and all were 18 years of age or older. The authors used pseudonyms to report the data and maintained confidentiality at all times.

Demographic characteristics of the participants

The ages of the 50 participants that were interviewed, ranged from 18 to 24 years with a mean age of 22 years (Standard deviation = 1 year). Most of them (68%) were female (n = 34). Half of them (n = 25) lived with grandparents in extended family households and 32% (n = 32) lived with siblings. Despite most of them living with adult family members in the household, almost a quarter 24% (n = 12) were responsible for their own care ( Table 1 ).

Table 2 presents data on the age, gender, and grade in which the participants left school. More (34) females than boys are early school leavers (34 vs. 16), and 43 out of 50 dropped out in high school. More than half (27) were between the ages of 15–18 years when they dropped out of school and 23 were aged above 18 years when they dropped out. Almost all (40) reported to have repeated at least one grade.

Findings from the interviews

Five themes describe the psychosocial effects of maternal death on the participants, namely; hunger and food insecurity, unequal treatment in the household, negative psychological emotions, prolonged bereavement, and maintaining silence.

Hunger and food insecurity

The participants in this study lived in extended family households and in youth headed households with constrained resources since they were outside the threshold for social grant support. Poverty is a risk for lack of food as well as emotional and behavioural distress for orphans. The literature shows that orphans who are food insecure are at risk of developing emotional distress. The participants related how they used go to bed hungry, leave for school without breakfast, and come back to a home with no food. Hunger contributed to their leaving school before completing high school. They worry about food for themselves, their siblings, and even their own children because they continue to go to bed hungry.

“I use to come back from school and find that there’s no food in the house and I could not study . I was a very bright learner during my school days . I used to go to school hungry without even a cup of tea . During lunch break , learners would go to their homes to eat , but I did not get anything at home . Sometimes I would go back to school but I would fail to concentrate . When the teacher teaches , you worry about what you will eat after school . I would not eat the whole day… , there was no bread after school . We would have no choice but wait till the evening meal” (Blessings, 22 year-old male).

“ My reason for dropping out was going to school without food , so I realised that it’s not good because still I wouldn’t even concentrate with an empty stomach , it’s painful , imagine you eat only at school… ., then you think what you will eat again” (Musa , 21 year old female) .

Unequal treatment in the household

The data revealed that orphans experienced discrimination as compared to the kin children where they lived. Half of the participants (25) lived with grandparents in extended family households and 21 lived in youth headed households. The narratives revealed that their relatives treated them differently from their own children such as making hurtful remarks. Research suggests that ill treatment in extended households is the main reason orphans opt to live in youth headed households.

“When my grandmother buys something she buys for XXX [her aunt’s] children . If she buys shoes for my aunt’s child , then I then have to go around the community to ask for help so that I can also buy shoes for my siblings . Sometimes when I complain and say I want this and that she says go and ask your mother , and I tell her my mother is dead and she would say go to the cemetery and ask her for that” (Mpho, 20 year-old female).

Negative psychological emotions

Research has established that orphans suffer from psychological problems and exhibit high internalising problems. Their narratives reflected multiple long-term negative psychological emotions. They described internalising depressive symptoms such as hopelessness, self-isolation, sleepless nights, lack of peace, constant pain, and suicidal ideation.

Lack of peace

“I was not at peace after my grandmother told me that I will never see my mother again . I never found peace after that . I couldn’t sleep at night because I kept thinking about my mother; sometimes I would wake up at night and go to my grandmother’s room to sleep there and when my grandmother wakes up at night she would find me awake and she would ask me why I couldn’t sleep ? I told her that I couldn’t sleep without my mother” (Themba, 22 year-old male).

Self-isolation

“When I miss my mother I sit alone” (Mpho, 20 year-old female).

“I stay the whole day in my room listening to music” (Blessings, 22 year-old male).

Hopelessness

“ After my mother passed away things changed and its difficult when you think of leaving home , where will I go because I cannot go and live at my friend’s home because they will get tired of me” (Mpho, 20 year-old female).

“I am considering becoming a driver because I think there’s nothing for me at the moment” (Gift, 24 year-old male).

Constant emotional pain

“Taking a deep breath… it’s painful… it’s very painful . We do not get used to that idea of not having a mother , for us not to have a mother changed us… our life style [participant crying] even our life has changed… it was never the same as before” (Thembi, 20 year-old female).

“Sometimes I feel like crying when I look at my siblings . It is painful . I wish they were still here [the parents]” (Thandi, 22 year-old female).

Suicidal ideation

“There was a time when I had some problems and I tried to kill myself . They found me before it was too late that’s when they took me to a social worker” (Thembi, 20 year-old female).

Prolonged bereavement

The narratives revealed that the wounds inflicted by the death of the mother had not healed for a number of the participants in this study. Many had not had a chance to grieve for the loss of their mothers. They painfully remembered the death of the mother as if it happened yesterday. Yearning for the mother emerged from their narratives as a major sub-theme.

Yearning for the mother

The participants had this strong belief that, had the mother not died, things would have been better and there would be someone there for them. The constant yearning for the mother triggered changes in their lives that they perceived were happening because of the mother’s death. They said that things would have been different if the mother had been around to show them love, to support them, to provide, to care, and to encourage them.

The mother’s love and understanding

“I still needed my mother’s love . It is too difficult to be without a mother . There will never be a person who will understand you like your mother , who will listen to you and never judge you . When my mother was alive , she could see me when I had problems . Now there is no one who sees me if I am not okay . If my mother were still around , she would see me . She would then ask me and we will talk about it” (Gift 24 year-old male).

“My mother’s place is always there at home . She is still needed…” (Thembi, 20 year-old female).

The mother’s support

“Sometimes I think that if she was still alive I would have been able to continue with my education . She was going to encourage me” (Gift 24 year-old male).

“ It’s not nice , it’s painful , because you find that certain things you want to discuss it with a parent , as for your mother , certain things you want to discuss with your mother , but she is not there” (Lorato, 21 year-old female).

The mother’s moral compass

“I think that if my mother was alive maybe things would have been better , because there are things that hurt me and I end up doing wrong things and feel bad about it the following day . For an example , I find a guy because I want money , I sleep with him , then the following morning I feel bad about it . That is why I say if my mother was alive such things would not be happening . Maybe everything that I wanted I was going to get it even if I would not get everything but some of it” (Nomthandazo, 20 year-old female).

Yearning for answers

“Yoh… I ask myself , if mom was still alive , what drove her to abandoning me ? ” (Lucky, 21 year-old female).

“Growing up without your parent is very difficult … you know … I really need my mother by my side . Like I am not right without her because there are many things … questions that I have to ask other people” (Lethabo, 21 year-old female).

Maintaining silence

The narratives revealed that the adults and the participants used silence in dealing with the illness and death of their mothers. In many societies in SSA, the parents’ illness is often kept secret from the children during the illness and after the death, which is a source of emotional pain, resentment, anger, and unresolved grief.

Silence about parental illness

In response to questions about the illness and cause of death of their mothers, the narratives revealed that the issue of silence about the nature and cause of illness of their mothers was a source of concern for most of the participants. They told how the extended family members chose to be silent about the cause of illness and death of their mothers despite their direct involvement in the care of them in their terminal stages.

“I nursed her but I didn’t know what she was suffering from . I only found out about her illness after her death . I found out when I was scolded and being told that my mother died of AIDS and I will also die of AIDS” (Gift, 24 year-old male).

“I didn’t know what was wrong with her until I got her death certificate written pneumonia but even today I still have questions of what type of pneumonia that it was” (Lethabo, 21 year-old female).

Silence about their feelings

The participants used silence to deal with the death of their mothers. They opted not to talk to others about things that bothered them and did not discuss their orphan status with others as a protective measure from rejection, stigma, and pain.

“I don’t talk . If I am angry , I alone will know . If my mother was still around she would see me , she would then ask me and we would talk about it” (Gift, 24 year-old male).

“I bottle everything inside” (Thandi, 22 year-old female).

Silence to avoid being labelled

“ I don’t want someone feeling pity for me because that brings back memories that I lost my parents while I was still young , so I don’t want someone who will say ‘Shame these are orphans’” (Angel, 23 year-old female).

The study aimed to explore how maternal death affects the psychosocial wellbeing of orphaned youth. We found that the participants lived in socially depressed environments characterised by absolute poverty [ 7 , 19 ]. The only source of income for most of the households where they lived was the old age pension grants of their elderly relatives. All the participants were 18 years and older, which is the cut-off age for receiving child social grants in South Africa. This meant that they had no financial means of taking care of themselves except in rare instances where they performed menial casual jobs. Those who had assumed the role of taking care of their younger siblings relied on meagre social grants received on behalf of their siblings. The financial constraints observed in this study are consistent with those found in other studies [ 49 – 51 ]. Research has established the fact that poverty is a key cause of distress among orphans, likely leading to emotional and behavioural distress [ 51 ].

The study revealed that lack of traditional kin support increased material deprivation of the participants, as 21 orphans were household heads. Equally, those who stayed with extended families (25) lived with elderly relatives in intergenerational households. In such a household, the elders stay with the adults and young children and provide for their households by using their old-age social grants [ 52 ]. It is in these households that the participants were often subjected to unequal and unfair treatment, compared with other children in the household [ 35 ]. The unfair treatment included verbal abuse; for example, one orphan was told, to go and ask for the things that she needed from her mother in the graveyard. This kind of treatment is termed an “unsympathetic gesture” made by those who care for the orphans and is associated with increased emotional and social problems in orphans [ 53 , 54 ]. The current study and others [ 55 – 58 ] found that such unequal treatment and gestures trigger emotional pain and feelings of being unloved. It is important that children are prepared for parental death so that they are less traumatised by the experience and are able to cope with it better [ 35 ].

The narratives revealed increased levels of psychological distress manifested in prolonged pain, despondency, hopelessness, anxiety and prolonged bereavement. It is an expectation in society that grieving individuals, including children, go through a number of stages such as feelings of shock, denial, sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt and, in the end, acceptance [ 59 ]. However, their narratives showed a preoccupation with the death of the mother, despite the length of the period of her death. They found it difficult to accept the death of the mother and often wondered how they were going to make it through life without her [ 51 ]. In the current study, this was reflected in repeated statements preceded by words such as “If my mother was alive…”

In addition, they feared for their future and experienced a lack of peace long after the death of the mother. A similar observation was reported by Runhare and Gordon [ 28 ] who stated that orphans experience hidden grief, which manifested in recollections about their late parents, deep sadness and a lack of peace. Likewise, fear and lack of peace were among the negative emotions experienced by orphans in studies conducted in Zimbabwe [ 60 , 61 ].

The narratives revealed that the participants used silence as a coping strategy although it is a negative coping mechanism. They spoke of bottling up their feelings when it comes to matters relating to the death of the mother. It is worth noting that they are from the same households and society that are characterised by a culture of silence, and the adoption of this behaviour of silence is explained as children mimicking the behaviour of the adults around them [ 62 ]. Nevertheless, research shows that denying children an opportunity to express their emotions results in negative manifestation of feelings characterised by anger, frustration and anxiety [ 35 , 63 ]. The participants in the current study expressed the same emotions. The findings suggest that it is important to provide psychological services for orphans immediately following the death of a parent. However, such services should be culturally appropriate and be provided to extended family members in the households.

Food insecurity was one of the major problems experienced by the participants, and hunger played a big role in their lives. They were repeatedly subjected to hunger at home and sometimes had to go to bed hungry. This finding correlates with that in the literature, which reports that orphans frequently go to bed hungry, which places them at risk of mental distress [ 64 ]. Hunger was a source of pain and sadness for them, and their narratives revealed that having to go to school on an empty stomach and experiencing frequent hunger drove some of them to leave school early. They told how hunger affected their concentration at school, which resulted in poor school performance. This is consistent with other studies in SSA which highlighted that hunger affected the educational performance of orphans negatively [ 7 , 22 ]. Most of the participants (40 of the 50) had repeated at least one grade, whereas nineteen had repeated more than once. It should be noted that the hunger that force them out of school continued after they left school, more so because they remained unemployed.

Early school leaving is associated with psychological distress among orphans [ 26 , 51 ]. The study found that leaving school early induced emotional distress for the participants. Their narratives showed that they worry about not being in school and felt that there was no hope in their future because they had dropped out of school. There is evidence that education increases children’s survival and development prospects [ 65 ]. Therefore, early school leaving has negative implications for future economic development as it reduces employment opportunities. Of public health concern is that education is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and health services utilization. This suggest that reduced number of years in schooling increases levels of risky health behaviours [ 66 , 67 ]. In the context of HIV/AIDS, the school may be the one place where children can obtain accurate information about HIV prevention, as well as life skills that empower them to resist unwanted sex and early marriage [ 65 ]. Without valuable life-skills, out-of-school orphans are more likely to face social, psychological, economic and health problems as they grow up [ 68 ].

Limitations

The study had limitations in that it was limited to one rural municipality, and the findings can therefore not be generalised to other parts of the country and to orphans in urban areas. In addition, the findings are based on a small sample of orphaned youth and cannot represent the psychosocial wellbeing of orphans who left school before completion. The findings may also be limited as they are based on the narratives of the participants only, and the study did not use standardised tools to measure psychosocial wellbeing. A larger sample using a quantitative survey and assessing mental health of orphans in and out of school using a standardised tool is required. One other limitation of the study is that we did not collect data on the HIV status of the orphans and could not report on own HIV status as a source of stress. Nevertheless, the focus of the study was on how maternal death affects the psychosocial wellbeing of orphans who dropped out of school prematurely.

Maternal death has a negative impact on the psychosocial wellbeing of the participants even after they crossed the 18 years threshold of orphan hood resulting in the development of internalising depressive symptoms. They suffer from emotional distress and prolonged bereavement characterised by perpetual yearning for their mothers which negatively affected their ability to develop coping strategies. They resorted to silence as the only coping strategy, and that further exacerbated their emotional distress and led to isolation, sadness, hopelessness, fear and lack of peace.

Dropping out of school was also a major stressor in their lives and contributed to their poor psychosocial wellbeing. Moreover, the state of their living conditions was overwhelming and they foresaw no opportunity for them to complete school.

The study found that in this setting, the extended family still plays a role in the care of orphans in spite of the socially depressed environment where most of the households belong. Therefore, it is important to consider this when interventions are developed to address the needs of orphans.

It is important that the relevant policies should include the continuation of support for those over the age of the 18 years threshold who experience maternal death–the same as for children or adolescents. In light of the withdrawal of the social grant system for this group of orphans, NGOs and community networks should play a key role in material and emotional support in a sustainable manner through government funding. There is need for interventions that will improve their skills to prepare them for the job market or self-employment. This could be achieved through the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Colleges.

Although the study population consisted of early school leavers, the proposed intervention should also focus on orphans who are still in school to mitigate the risk of leaving school early before completing high school. The school is in a position to mitigate against issues like poor academic performance, high levels of psychosocial distress, and early school leaving among orphans.

The lack of routine screening for mental health of orphans in South Africa increases their vulnerability to undiagnosed depression. While this is not the competency of the school, the school health services presently being offered in South Africa have a critical role to play in the development of interventions for the mental health screening of orphans in schools. It is crucial that the school health services further provide counselling services to assist learners to deal with problems that affect their educational performance like the death of a parent and other related psychosocial emergencies.

Schools can also play a part in providing for this support by empowering the teachers with skills to identify orphans who are at risk and refer to appropriate service provides such as social workers, psychologists, and other social services. There is substantive evidence that teacher are more likely to support orphans when they know about their living circumstances. One of the key challenges of orphans is lack of support in getting their homework done; the school could provide space, resources, and support in this regard.

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the support from the schools, educators, and community based organizations that facilitated data collection. We also thank the University Research Development Grant for financially support that was granted to the first author.

Funding Statement

The University Research Development Grant financially supported the research project.

Data Availability

Entertainment
Environment
Information Science and Technology
Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Life Orphanage

Reflective Essay on the Lessons I Learned from Visiting the Orphanage

*minimum deadline

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below

Justification
Chinese New Year

Related Essays

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children

Narrative report.

Being able to help is a privilege for us students for it teaches us how to become concerned to those who are in need, it helps us to understand the spirit of compassion and to share what we have to and abolish the selfishness hidden deep within us. Last July 15, 2012, our NSTP class went to Huspicio de San Jose to conduct a visit to the special children housed in the said orphanage. We hired a jeepney and we rode it going to Huspicio where the children are waiting for us.

We brought prizes and candies for and we prepared games for them to enjoy.

Our Visit to the Orphanage

We also organized a program and prepared snacks for the special children. We all helped for the success of the aid event. The program started with a prayer, thanking God’s graces and for us arriving to the site safely. And then, an opening remark was made and the caregivers in Huspicio introduced each of the children, with their personal background such as their names, ages and the sickness and mental disorder that they are encountering.

They also shared to us that most of the children are very talented: they can sing and some can even dance very well.

These have put a smile in our faces. We also conducted an exercise to warm up our muscles for the long day. The excitement grew when the game proper has started. The first game is a guessing game. Each contestant should correctly guess the name of the fruit in the picture shown to them.

Proficient in: Orphanage

“ This writer never make an mistake for me always deliver long before due date. Am telling you man this writer is absolutely the best. ”

We can see to the children’s eyes their enthusiasm to answer every picture, and their smiles tell that they are enjoying the game. During the event, I took care of Mayang, a special child in Huspicio whose disorder is cerebral palsy.

Her real name is Maria, but her close friends as well as the caregivers chose to call her Mayang as her pet name. She’s a very sweet kid, in fact, she loves to hug and cuddle my arms and hands. She looks so cute every time she smiles. A very jolly person, she likes to dance and she’s indeed very good in it. We enjoyed each other’s company, especially when we joined the games that the class has prepared. We laughed and cheered every time she wins a game, and we danced with the music playing in the background.

When I look at Mayang, it seems that she’s a normal kid just like everybody else. Yes, maybe she’s a disabled person but still, she’s like us, like me. She has feelings just like the all of us, and wants to enjoy life just like everybody else. I enjoyed being with Mayang, I started to care for her like she’s my own younger sister. She’s a blessing from God and she deserved to be loved and cared for. We ate snacks together with the children, and shared memories that will be forever seared in our memories. W bade farewell to each one of them, promising that we will meet again soon.

I kissed Mayang’s forehead, and she gently squeezed my hands, our fingers interlocked. This’ll be a temporary good-bye for the both of us. I’m looking forward to our next visit in Huspicio de San Jose. This activity made me realize many things, things that made a great impact to my life. It is indeed my first time to encounter these kind of people, yet, I already felt love and concern for them. They made me realize how lucky and blessed I am. Thanks to NSTP, I had a chance to share my time to these children. I hope that our next visit will be as fruitful as this.

Cite this page

Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children. (2019, Nov 27). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/

"Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children." PaperAp.com , 27 Nov 2019, https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/

PaperAp.com. (2019). Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/ [Accessed: 3 Apr. 2024]

"Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children." PaperAp.com, Nov 27, 2019. Accessed April 3, 2024. https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/

"Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children," PaperAp.com , 27-Nov-2019. [Online]. Available: https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/. [Accessed: 3-Apr-2024]

PaperAp.com. (2019). Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/nstp-narrative-report-helphing-orphaned-children/ [Accessed: 3-Apr-2024]

Preparation narrative report Essay Pages: 10 (2955 words)
OJT Narrative Report Pages: 7 (2015 words)
Narrative Report For Research Paper Pages: 2 (494 words)
Introduction For Narrative Report Pages: 6 (1600 words)
Rehabilitation Of Autistic Children Children And Young People Essay Pages: 13 (3692 words)
Analysis Of Children With Dyslexia, Children With Dysgraphia Pages: 4 (1034 words)
A Report on the Movie Minority Report Pages: 2 (433 words)
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass Pages: 4 (1101 words)
Narrative Poem: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales Pages: 4 (1068 words)
Personal Narrative - The Big Game Pages: 2 (397 words)

Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient

Silhouette of a child boy in mental health children awareness concept, flat vector illustration.

I n 2022, the World Health Organization estimated that 1 billion children were maltreated each year around the globe. Maltreatment such as neglect and abuse are types of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs . But they often say little about how children respond, which can either be traumatic or resilient. Now, revolutionary new findings in the sciences help us understand how different dimensions of adversity can leave different signatures of trauma and how we can use this knowledge to help children recover and build resilience against future harms.

Consider Ethan and Kevin (their names are pseudonyms to protect their privacy), two children that I worked with as an educator and researcher of trauma in schools. Ethan was abandoned by his mother at birth and placed in an orphanage in Eastern Europe, his home for the next six years. He was deprived of the fundamental needs of safety, nutrition, and human contact. He had books, but there was no one to read to him. He had caretakers, but they rarely comforted him when he was upset.

Kevin, on the other hand, witnessed his father physically and emotionally abusing his mother for the first ten years of his life. Around his sixth birthday, Kevin directly experienced his father's abuse. For entertainment, and to teach him that life is tough, Dad put Kevin and his older sister Joani into the outdoor dog cage, threw food in, and forced them to compete for their nightly dinner. If they refused, he beat them until they entered the dinner arena.

Ethan and Kevin were both traumatized by their maltreatment, but that doesn't capture what was happening inside of them. Ethan had no motivation, was numb to rewards, struggled with school and couldn't maintain social relationships. Kevin was an emotional maelstrom, frightened, hypervigilant, running away from unfamiliar men and hurting himself when he heard noises. Ethan and Kevin presented different traumatic responses or “signatures”—unique identifiers of the mental distortions created by their adverse experiences. Identifying these traumatic signatures enables caretakers, teachers, doctors, and counselors to sculpt a path to resilience that is specific to the child's harms and needs and gives them the best hope for recovery, whether in childhood or later in life.

Read More: How Traumatized Children See the World, According to Their Drawings

The idea of traumatic signatures is only a few years old , but the scientific evidence leading to it is not. We have known for decades that different environmental experiences shape development, including how and when our emotions, thoughts, and actions mature. When the environment is harsh and unpredictable, threatening survival, the timing of development tends to speed up, leading to individuals who mature quickly—recognizing and responding appropriately to danger as youngsters. In contrast, when the environment is impoverished, with individuals deprived of essential experiences and resources, development tends to slow down, resulting in delays in the attainment of independence, dedicated social roles, and sexual behavior.

Ethan and Kevin, like millions of other children, experienced two of the core types of ACEs — deprivation and abuse, respectively — during different time periods of development. These differences in experience shaped their traumatic signatures.

Deprivation is typified by a delay in the development of the brain’s executive functions —attention, short-term working memory, self-regulation, and planning. The executive functions form the bedrock to all learning and decision-making, but they are also essential in supporting more specialized cognitive functions such as language, social thinking, math, music, and morality. Children with weak executive functions fare poorly in school, and are socially and physically unhealthy. Such was Ethan’s traumatic response.

Abuse is characterized by warp speed development of a nervous system that detects threats, accompanied by hypervigilance, emotional turbulence, and out of control behavior. The root cause is a hyperactive amygdala, a brain region that plays an essential role in emotional processing, and its connection to a frontal lobe region that controls our feelings, thoughts, and actions. This constellation of changes to the nervous system leaves the child in a heightened state of fear, either fleeing or fighting to cope with an unsafe world . Such was Kevin's traumatic response.

The signatures penned by these types of adversity are further modified by their timing. In studies of orphans living in austere, institutionalized settings — such as the orphanage that Ethan grew up in—those deprived of essential experiences for more than the first few years of life showed deficits in executive functioning, social relationships, and attachment. In contrast, orphans who were placed in foster care by their second birthday, largely recovered from their deprivation in the years that followed. Children who are abused earlier in life , typically before puberty—such as Kevin—show greater emotional dysregulation, weaker control over their thoughts and actions, and more rapid biological aging.

Read More: How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Premature Aging

Different types of adversity, including different combinations, pen different signatures. But ultimately, they also define how we help children recover and sculpt their resilience. Each child's genetic architecture positions them somewhere on a spectrum of responses to adversity that runs from vulnerable to resilient . Those who land on the resilient end are handed greater immunity to adversity because of stronger executive functions that tamp down emotions and maintain focused attention. Those who land on the vulnerable end are handed greater sensitivity to adversity, dominated by emotional turbulence and inflamed autoimmune systems that heighten illness . Environmental experiences can displace individuals onto different sections of this spectrum, either enhancing their resilience or magnifying their vulnerability.

At age six, Ethan's tenure of deprivation ended and a rich life of loving care started with Julie, his adoring adoptive mother. At age 10, Kevin's father was incarcerated and his parents divorced, thereby ending his tenure of exposure to abuse and starting a more promising life with his mother Kate who desperately tried to provide for him despite her own struggles with mental health. Ethan and Kevin were both on Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) that documented their disabilities and guided the work carried out in their schools. Both of their schools were trauma-informed, meaning that they adhered to the 4Rs : r ealizing that traumatic experiences are common, r ecognizing that traumatic experiences are associated with specific symptoms or signatures, r esponding to a child's trauma by integrating knowledge of what happened with what can be done to help, and r esisting re-traumatizing both students and staff. Both schools were also aware of Ethan's and Kevin's life experiences and recognized that they would require different approaches for aiding recovery and building resilience.

Ethan, like other children who have been deprived of essential experiences in the early years of their lives, required an approach that reassured him of receiving unwavering, predictable care while providing strategies to enhance his ability to learn and develop healthy relationships. His care included access to a visual schedule that showed the timing of activities, including when meals and snacks were provided. Predictable access to meals and snacks, both at home and in school, rapidly helped reduce his obsession and hoarding of food. The unwavering support provided by Julie as well as the school staff, eventually melted away Ethan's distrust of others, enabling healthy relationships to grow. The visual schedule helped reduce the load on his short- term working memory, while helping him prepare and plan for transitions between activities. Stubbornly resistant to change, however, was Ethan’s capacity to associate or link actions with consequences. For Ethan, as for other children who have been severely deprived of experiences early in life, associative learning was heavily compromised, awaiting the addition of new tools to the trauma-informed toolkit.

Kevin’s signature of abuse was initially treated by a psychiatrist with Tenex—a medication for aggression, impulsivity, and hyperactivity—along with cognitive behavioral therapy to help him find alternative ways of thinking about and coping with his trauma. His teachers intervened further, providing him with frequent breaks to manage his frustration and burn off some energy. These approaches reduced Kevin’s outbursts and violent attacks on peers and staff, but he was still highly impulsive and fidgety. Kevin’s team decided to start him on neurofeedback , a method that enabled him to consciously modify the pattern of brain activation, shifting toward greater calm, focus, and control over his emotions. Eventually, Kevin developed good friends, healthy relationships with teachers, and an after-school job where he was learning to be a car mechanic. He also learned to trust other men, including me, one of his teachers, who deeply cared about him and cheered on his successes.

Ethan and Kevin walked off their landscapes of harm and onto paths of hope, equipped with skills to manage future adversity. Both lucked out with relatively resilient genetic architectures that were joined by nurturing environments, ones filled with people who cared for them. Many other children, perhaps the majority of the 1 billion who are maltreated each year, are less fortunate, more vulnerable by nature and nurture. While it is highly unlikely that we will ever flatten the landscape of harm, we can do far more to nurture recovery and build resilience if we recognize how traumatic signatures unfold—and how to create action plans to work through them.

More Must-Reads From TIME

Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
Passengers Are Flying up to 30 Hours to See Four Minutes of the Eclipse
Biden’s Campaign Is In Trouble. Will the Turnaround Plan Work?
Essay: The Complicated Dread of Early Spring
Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise
The Financial Influencers Women Actually Want to Listen To
The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

biggest yacht on google earth

Help us rescue the children through the building of Tender Heart Village! We need your support and help in order to build and further develop a safe haven for these girls.

Mission For Orphans is a non-profit, grassroots organization reaching out, touching the lives of orphans, street children and victims of human trafficking in India. Mission for Orphans help support several orphanages in India, with over 200 children cared for in India. Mission for Orphans helps finance street-feeding programs throughout India and are presently feeding and caring for over 1800 children/families in poverty stricken villages. There are over 300,000 street children in Mumbai alone.

Our purpose is to rescue children that are trapped in extreme poverty, abandoned, abused, and forced into child labor. There are over one hundred fifty five million orphans worldwide, twenty million orphans in India and over two hundred million children are in child labor. It is estimated half of the children are involved in the worst kind of forced child labor, such as child prostitution, hard labor in mines and stone quarries, etc.

“He who can reach a child’s heart can reach the world’s heart.” Rudyard Kipling

mission4orphans

How can you help?

We need your financial support to carry out our mission.

Our Commitment

Poverty Villages

prout catamaran for sale florida

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

Want free help with your college essay?

UPchieve connects you with knowledgeable and friendly college advisors—online, 24/7, and completely free. Get 1:1 help brainstorming topics, outlining your essay, revising a draft, or editing grammar.

Writing a strong college admissions essay

Learn about the elements of a solid admissions essay.

Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes

Learn some of the most common mistakes made on college essays

Brainstorming tips for your college essay

Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

How formal should the tone of your college essay be?

Learn how formal your college essay should be and get tips on how to bring out your natural voice.

Taking your college essay to the next level

Hear an admissions expert discuss the appropriate level of depth necessary in your college essay.

Student Stories

Student Story: Admissions essay about a formative experience

Get the perspective of a current college student on how he approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about personal identity

Get the perspective of a current college student on how she approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about community impact

Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

This content is licensed by Khan Academy and is available for free at www.khanacademy.org.

Rescuers hope AI will help reunite orphaned orca calf with pod

If calf escapes lagoon off vancouver island, ai program can help quickly identify pod's location: researcher.

a young orca breaches the water near land

Social Sharing

The latest advancements in identifying killer whales with the help of artificial intelligence are being put to use to help reunite an orphaned orca with its pod — but first it needs to leave the lagoon on the coast of Vancouver Island where its mother died.

The B.C.-based whale research group Bay Cetology is offering access to its online AI-assisted photo database to local photographers and tour operators as part of efforts to track the whale's relatives, in the hopes of ultimately giving the calf a chance to connect with its pod.

Executive director Jared Towers said the technology scans submitted photos of killer whales and can quickly identify individual them based on their dorsal fins and other markings.

He said scientists have been able to identify specific animals using their fins for more than 50 years.

"Really, this is just an extension of that research methodology," Towers said. "It started with film, and then it went digital, and now we're transitioning into deep learning, machine learning, or an artificial intelligence kind of model to conduct this work moving forward."

Rescuers using AI to try and rescue stranded orca calf in B.C.

The young killer whale has been stranded in the lagoon near Zeballos, on northwestern Vancouver Island, since its pregnant mother died after being caught when the tide went out more than a week ago .

Whale experts, First Nations members and experts with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) haven't yet been able to lure the calf into the open ocean where it might reconnect with its family pod.

Paul Cottrell, DFO marine mammal rescue co-ordinator, said although the calf has been on its own for nine days, it's still active.

"The animal has been observed with a duck in its mouth, we believe," he said, suggesting it may have been able to eat a little bit of food.

an orcal whale is seen with a bird between its teeth

The DFO said in a statement Monday that the tides in the remote location continue to be too low for efforts to encourage the whale to go over a sandbar and into the open ocean.

Baby orca 'not ready' to leave remote B.C. lagoon despite 'perfect unison' to herd with oikomi pipes

Towers said the AI program, known as Finwave, is currently in its beta-testing stage, but has a more than 90 per cent accuracy rate when looking for Bigg's killer whales such as the orphaned calf.

The platform, which started in 2021, has about 200 users in its testing phase and the goal is to turn it into an open-source data system by this summer.

Towers said offering access to local tour operators, naturalists, and photographers currently working off the west coast of Vancouver Island will allow scientists to be better placed to help when it's time to connect the young whale with its family.

He said it's possible the animal will make it out of the lagoon on its own, at which point it will be up to the whale to call out to find its pod.

Killer whale rescue team continues efforts to coax calf to ocean

If that doesn't happen, Towers said rescuers could decide to lift the animal out of the lagoon and place it in the open ocean.

"So, that's why it's very important for us to know more about where that family is, and which way they're going, and when they're there, and try and get an indication of their routine," he said.

He said photos taken Sunday morning and submitted to Finwave show the calf's relatives were off Ucluelet, B.C., about 150 kilometres south of Zeballos, and heading north.

Rescuers have tried a range of methods to get the calf beyond the sandbar, including recorded whale calls, specialized directional guide lines, Indigenous drum beats and metal pipes in the water struck to create a "sound wall."

Orca calf rescue team considers changing tactics to save stranded B.C. whale: DFO

Rescuers had to pause their efforts over the weekend while they wait for the tide to rise.

The local Ehattesaht First Nation, which is helping in the rescue effort, has given the young calf a name: kwiisahi?is, meaning Brave Little Hunter.

Chief Simon John told CBC News that while nature will take its course, it's been hard on his community to see the calf isolated.

"The community is really affected by it spiritually," he said.

John said the nation will try to interact with the killer whale in the coming days and try to get it to follow them into the open ocean.

"All we can have is hope," he said.

With files from CBC News

$2,000 No Essay Scholarship

Help cover the cost of college without writing a single essay!

Niche is giving one student $2,000 to put toward tuition, housing, books or other college expenses — no essay required.

Apply below for your chance to win so you can focus on your education, not your finances. Good luck!

Min 7 characters

By proceeding you acknowledge and agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

By proceeding you acknowledge and agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and Scholarship Rules .

Who Can Apply

All high school and college students, as well as anyone looking to attend college or graduate school in the next year. Please note: Not everyone is eligible for this scholarship. Niche sponsored scholarships and sweepstakes are for people with US citizenship or a valid Visa/US passport only. Read the scholarship rules for full eligibility requirements.

How It Works

The $2,000 “No Essay” Scholarship is an easy scholarship with no essay required! Only one entry allowed per person. The winner will be determined by random drawing and then contacted directly and announced in Niche's email newsletter and on the Scholarship Winners page.

About Niche scholarships

We believe cost shouldn’t keep anyone from pursuing a higher education, so we connect students with thousands of scholarships — many of which don’t require an essay — to help them afford college. In 2023 alone, we offered over $285,000 in Niche scholarships. Read more about Niche scholarships here or visit our FAQs .

Share full article

Supported by

Guest Essay

Let People Sell Their Kidneys. It Will Save Lives.

An illustration of a shirtless man dangling his feet in a kidney-shaped pool.

By Dylan Walsh

Mr. Walsh is a freelance journalist who focuses on science and the criminal justice system.

I owe the past 25 years of my life to my father, who dozed under general anesthesia as a surgeon cut eight inches from stomach to spine, removed one of his kidneys, placed it on ice and sent it to a nearby operating room, where it was fitted into my abdomen. My brother had a kidney transplant the same week, six days before I did. His new kidney came from a man we never knew who had died in a car accident in the mountains.

We were teenagers, afflicted with a congenital kidney disease. But we were lucky.

There are 100,000 people in the United States waiting for a kidney. More than half a million are on dialysis, which from my experience I know to be more of a means of survival than a form of living. About 4,000 people die each year while waiting for a kidney. Another 4,000 become too sick to undergo surgery — a gentler way of saying that they, too, die. The National Kidney Foundation estimates that without more investment in preventing diabetes and other ailments, more than one million people will be suffering from kidney failure by 2030, up from over 800,000 now .

These numbers illuminate a story of largely preventable suffering. Hundreds of millions of healthy people walk the streets quietly carrying two kidneys. They need only one. The head-scratcher is how to get kidneys from the people who have one to spare into the people who need one. Getting them from genetically modified pigs , as was recently found possible, won’t be a widespread solution for a very long time.

There’s a simpler and long overdue answer: Pay people for their kidneys.

Creating a market for kidneys is not a new concept, but it’s historically been met with disgust: Sell what? To be fair, some of the ways to structure such a market would be irresponsible, coercive and deserving of that disgust.

But others are more thoughtful and prudent. One approach is to make the federal government the sole purchaser of kidneys. Donor and recipient would never meet. Compensation would be fixed, haggling impossible. After the kidney is acquired, the transplant process would unfold in the typical manner.

This idea fits nicely within today’s health economics. Through a quirk of a 50-year-old law , Medicare is the primary insurer for anyone of any age in need of dialysis or a transplant. This has extended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. It has also been costly, with end-stage renal disease patients accounting for about 7 percent of Medicare’s spending, despite constituting 1 percent of its users. Because transplants are ultimately cheaper than dialysis, if Medicare started paying people to donate kidneys, fewer people would need to survive on dialysis, and Medicare would need less taxpayer money to cover it.

Federal law presents the first and most significant hurdle to a market for kidneys. The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, NOTA for short, makes it unlawful “to knowingly acquire, receive or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation.” Though markets exist for human tissue, bone, amniotic stem cells and blood plasma and for the use of a woman’s womb and her eggs, organs cannot legally be bought and sold.

For several decades, efforts to persuade people to become kidney donors haven’t increased the number of volunteers. There were roughly 6,000 living kidney donors in 2000; there were roughly 6,000 in 2023. The only way to get more donors is to change the law.

One organization, the Coalition to Modify NOTA, hopes to legalize compensation and then pass a federal law it has titled the End Kidney Deaths Act . As it’s written, it would award living donors $50,000 over five years — $10,000 per year — through refundable tax credits. The coalition says it has held meetings with nearly 100 legislators from both parties and has been encouraged by the level of support for its idea (though the bill still has not been brought to the floor of Congress).

Other proposals meant to solve kidney donation shortages abound. Several bills have recently been introduced to Congress, including one that would prohibit life and disability insurance companies from denying coverage to or increasing premiums for donors, and another that would reimburse donors for expenses they incur during donation. Two Colorado state representatives, one Democratic and one Republican, have drafted their own proposal for a statewide tax credit of up to $40,000 for organ donors; a representative in New Hampshire is trying to create an open market for organs in his state.

Some people who are opposed to the idea of selling organs argue that we should instead improve the process of capturing organs from people who have died. But even a flawlessly functioning system that recovered and transplanted 100 percent of available organs would not meet demand. And deceased-donor kidneys don’t last as long as those from living donors.

One of the most consistent and vociferous objections to a kidney market centers on the fear of coercion or exploitation: If you pay people to do something, particularly if you pay them a lot, then you will drive those who are most desperate and socially precarious to take steps they later will regret.

Ned Brooks, a co-founder of the Coalition to Modify NOTA, told me there are ways to mitigate “the concern that someone is going to donate a kidney because they have a gambling debt or they are losing their house to foreclosure or you name it.” His organization’s proposal, for example, would split the $50,000 payment into installments arriving only around tax season to weaken donation as a get-rich-quick scheme. Even now, donation requires a weeks- to monthslong process of physical and psychological evaluation .

Compensating donors could also go a long way to reducing current inequities. Black patients are more than three times as likely to develop kidney failure as white patients. And under today’s system, white patients are about four times as likely as Black patients (and approximately two times as likely as Asian and Hispanic patients) to receive a living kidney donation within two years of needing one . While there are many reasons for this imbalance, one critical factor is that white people generally possess social networks saturated with volunteers who are able to make the kinds of accommodations needed for major surgery. Compensation would broaden the pool of available kidneys for those who lack these social networks.

Alongside the flurry of political activity surrounding organ donation, a shift in attitudes among the public seems to be underway, making this moment particularly ripe for legislative change. A 2019 study found that roughly 60 percent of Americans would favor compensation through a public agency — and this number, depending on the form of compensation, would increase to 70 percent to 80 percent if such a system eliminated kidney shortages. This is a rare nonpartisan idea at a highly polarized moment and could save the dozen people who die every day waiting for a kidney.

My kidney has been ticking along since August 1998, far longer than the average transplantation. It will give out sometime, maybe before my children graduate from high school. It will almost certainly fail before any children they may have are born. Still, I’ve lived 25 years I would not have had otherwise. I hope for a world in which others — many others — are given such an exquisite gift.

Dylan Walsh is a freelance journalist in Chicago who focuses on science and the criminal justice system.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

IMAGES

⇉Finding Home Through an Orphanage: The Fate of an Orphan Child Essay
📌 A Visit to an Orphanage: A Life-Changing Experience
short essay on Helping others in English
A Helping Hand Essay Example
How You Can Help Orphans
Orphanage Management Essay Example

COMMENTS

"Why do you support orphanages?"
In contrast, more positively structured orphan care can help compensate for many of the developmental delays and challenges the children face, and they're certainly a better alternative than homelessness or exploitation. In many regions of the world, organizations are promoting that the most ideal setting for children (in and outside of ...
My Visit to an Orphanage: a Reflection
Stepping into the world of an orphanage is like entering a realm where resilience and hope thrive amidst challenges. The experience of visiting an orphanage is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming, offering a profound insight into the lives of children who have faced adversity at a young age. This essay reflects on my visit to an orphanage ...
How to Help Orphans: Making a Meaningful Difference
Volunteerism is an impactful way to make a difference in the lives of orphans. Individuals can offer their time, skills, and expertise to directly engage with these children. Volunteering in orphanages, schools, or mentorship programs allows for meaningful connections and positive influence. In conclusion, supporting orphans is a responsibility ...
How A Visit To The Orphanage Changed My Perspective On Life
Be a helping hand. The Heritage of Faith and Hope Children's Home trained young men and women who are now giving back. Most graduated from college and settled into life but return to mentor others.
Essay on Orphanage
Introduction. An orphanage is a residential institution dedicated to the care of orphans—children whose biological parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them. Orphanages have been in existence for centuries, providing refuge and protection for vulnerable children. However, the concept of orphanages has evolved ...
How to Help Orphans Without Adopting
Compassion's programs are instrumental in keeping these orphaned children off the streets and giving them the necessary resources for life. They can access nutritious food, clean water, medical care, education and training in life skills. Isaiah 1:17 says, "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.
What Are the Benefits of Helping Orphanages and Orphans?
Frequently, helping orphanages and orphans include volunteer training, allowing you to gain new skills and devote your time to helping people not only within your community but near and far. 4. Enhance your mental health. It is also beneficial to our mental health to helping orphanages and orphans. The psychological and physical health benefits ...
Making a Lasting Impact: How to Help Orphans and Change Lives
Making a Lasting Commitment: Monthly Recurring Donations for Orphans. While one-time donations are valuable, establishing a monthly recurring donation offers a way to make a lasting commitment to helping orphans. We will explore the benefits of recurring donations and how they provide a stable and predictable source of funding for orphanages.
25 Ways to Help an Orphan
Organize a "Service Auction for Orphans," asking family members and friends to donate a service to be auctioned off with proceeds going to help orphans. Organize a "Dollars for Orphans" drive. Set a week where you ask everyone you come in contact with for $1 to help an orphan. Explain that most orphans live on less than $1 each day.
7 Lessons for Working with Orphans & Vulnerable Children
Published after the conclusion of this work, this year, our case study has identified seven best practices for working with this population: To be successful, you must address the daunting academic, financial, emotional, and social challenges that create additional barriers to success for orphans and vulnerable children.
Volunteering in orphanages
If you want to donate to help children, you may want to consider supporting family-based care services. Keeping families together is better and cheaper than keeping children in institutions. Sadly, unless we raise awareness about the impact of volunteering in orphanages, this issue will only grow and harm more children.
The psychosocial wellbeing of orphans: The case of early school leavers
The emergence of a large population of orphaned youth in sub-Saharan Africa is due to the natural maturity of orphaned children. Research indicates that orphaned youth face more negative psychosocial challenges than their younger counterparts do. ... As such, the researches recruited the participants with the help of social workers, community ...
Reflective Essay on the Lessons I Learned from Visiting ...
They Cage the Animals At Night: An Authobiographical Novel about the Story of a Strong Orphan Essay The novel "They Cage the Animals At Night", portrays the heartbreaking story of a young boy named Jenni ...
(PDF) Educational support for orphans and vulnerable children in
fees, need to help with household lab our or having to stay at home to care for sick pa rents or younger children. Ebersoh n and Eloff (2002) also observed that the marked decl ine in
Financial Aid And Resources For Orphan Students
New Orphan Asylum Scholarship Foundation. It is one of the oldest scholarships for orphaned students. It has been established in 1942 and can help students who would like to attend college. James Howard Farris Scholarship. You can receive up to $500 financial assistance for tuition, transportation, and basic needs.
Support Of Orphans And Vulnerable Children Education Essay
Introduction. Within the inter-disciplinary understanding of development, extensive research has been done in the field of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), with the aim to recommend strategies, guidelines and interventions that would assist such children. Within these, there is a global notion to support these children within their ...
Challenges Faced by Orphaned Children: A Critical Examination
3. The Harsh Realities of Street Life and Emotional Trauma. Tragically, the culmination of these challenges often propels orphaned children toward the harsh realities of street life. Some, overwhelmed by the sense of abandonment and the absence of a support system, choose to forsake their homes in search of solace amidst the unforgiving streets.
Finding Purpose: My Journey of Selflessness through Societal
I wanted to do something selflessly for someone and help the society which eventually will satiate my soul and give me peace. I joined an organization which helps poor children by providing them education and teach them to cope up with life as an orphan. ... top-notch essay and term paper samples on various topics. Additional materials, such as ...
Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children
They also shared to us that most of the children are very talented: they can sing and some can even dance very well. These have put a smile in our faces. We also conducted an exercise to warm up our muscles for the long day. The excitement grew when the game proper has started. The first game is a guessing game.
Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient
April 3, 2024 7:00 AM EDT. Hauser is the author of Vulnerable Minds: The harm of childhood trauma and the hope of resilience, which was published on March 12, 2024 by Penguin-Random House, New ...
helping an orphan essay
In an essay about why one wants to become a teacher, one should write about their love of helping others learn. The urge to become a teacher is often backed by many noble feelings like commitment to the future, interest in community, love o..... An informative essay is any type of essay that has the goal of informing or educating an audience.
Helping Orphanages in India
Mission for Orphans helps finance street-feeding programs throughout India and are presently feeding and caring for over 1800 children/families in poverty stricken villages. There are over 300,000 street children in Mumbai alone. Our purpose is to rescue children that are trapped in extreme poverty, abandoned, abused, and forced into child labor.
Financial Aid to Help the Orphans and Foster Children
The Orphan Foundation of America scholarship can provide foster students with a sum that may go over $500 and reach up to $5,000. The applicant must be under 25 years old. The main goal of the Jack Pollock Scholarship is to help the orphans. According to the conditions, $2,000 is guaranteed to those who are ready to write a solid essay about ...
helping an orphan essay
"Why do you support orphanages?" Brittany Bullen; December 30, 2021; In 2019, our Executive Director, Kent White, met with Nikolai Kuleba, the Ombudsman for Children with the
Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay
Sample College Essay 2 with Feedback. This content is licensed by Khan Academy and is available for free at www.khanacademy.org. College essays are an important part of your college application and give you the chance to show colleges and universities your personality. This guide will give you tips on how to write an effective college essay.
Rescuers hope AI will help reunite orphaned orca calf with pod
Rescuers using AI to try and rescue stranded orca calf in B.C. Nine days after an orca calf became stranded in a lagoon off the B.C. coast, rescuers trying to get the killer whale back to its pod ...
The Dogs Helping the Covenant Children Find Their Way Back
Monroe Joyce, 10, runs with one of two dachshunds taken in by her family. She is one of several children who now have a dog after surviving the Covenant School shooting. Emily Cochrane and Erin ...
$2,000 No Essay Scholarship
March 31, 2024. Help cover the cost of college without writing a single essay! Niche is giving one student $2,000 to put toward tuition, housing, books or other college expenses — no essay required. Apply below for your chance to win so you can focus on your education, not your finances. Good luck!
World Health Day 2024
World Health Day 2024 is 'My health, my right'. This year's theme was chosen to champion the right of everyone, everywhere to have access to quality health services, education, and information, as well as safe drinking water, clean air, good nutrition, quality housing, decent working and environmental conditions, and freedom from discrimination.
Opinion
One approach is to make the federal government the sole purchaser of kidneys. Donor and recipient would never meet. Compensation would be fixed, haggling impossible. After the kidney is acquired ...

How to Help Orphans: Making a Meaningful Difference

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Orphanage

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

Essay on Orphanage

100 Words Essay on Orphanage

Life in an Orphanage

The Importance of Orphanages

250 Words Essay on Orphanage

The Role and Importance of Orphanages

Challenges Faced by Orphanages

Reforming the Orphanage System

500 Words Essay on Orphanage

The Historical Context of Orphanages

Modern Perspective on Orphanages

The Role of Orphanages in Developing Nations

Orphanages and Child Rights

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

What Are the Benefits of Helping Orphanages and Orphans?

1. Learn about yourself

2. Advantages To Health

3. It helps you improve your skills

4. Enhance your mental health

5. Community involvement

6. Provide career opportunities

Share the joy

Recent Posts

Saving the future, one orphan at a time.

25 Ways to Help an Orphan

Search UNICEF

The psychosocial wellbeing of orphans: The case of early school leavers in socially depressed environment in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Mathildah Mokgatle

Introduction

Study design

Setting and population

Data collection and measures

Data analysis

Trustworthiness

Demographic characteristics of the participants

Findings from the interviews

Hunger and food insecurity

Unequal treatment in the household

Negative psychological emotions

Lack of peace

Self-isolation

Hopelessness

Constant emotional pain

Suicidal ideation

Prolonged bereavement

Yearning for the mother

The mother’s love and understanding

The mother’s support

The mother’s moral compass

Yearning for answers

Maintaining silence

Silence about parental illness

Silence about their feelings

Silence to avoid being labelled

Limitations

Acknowledgments

Funding Statement

Data Availability

Reflective Essay on the Lessons I Learned from Visiting the Orphanage

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Nstp Narrative Report: Helphing Orphaned Children

Our Visit to the Orphanage

Cite this page

Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient

More Must-Reads From TIME

You May Also Like

biggest yacht on google earth

mission4orphans

How can you help?

prout catamaran for sale florida

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Want free help with your college essay?