Help bring circus to Iraqi children....

[tlcandie]

http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/55/index.php

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C2i is a small group of activist-performers – fools, clowns, jugglers, unicyclists, stilt walkers and magicians - who will travel to Iraq in January 2004 to give performances and circus skills workshops to children traumatized by sanctions, war and its aftermath. They will give circus toys and humanitarian goods to the children and their families and, on their return, will carry out advocacy work for the rights of the Iraqi people based on their new understanding of the situation.

Performances and workshops will take place primarily in camps of Internally Displaced Persons (refugees within the country, made homeless by bombing or post-war evictions) and children’s shelters. Many of the children in the shelters are not strictly orphans but their families are simply too poor to keep them at home. Others have been living on the streets for some time, working as shoe shiners, selling or begging. Tragically there are also girls who were raped during the post-war chaos and, as a result, thrown out by their families in a society which regards them as useless if they are no longer marriageable.

C2i is working in co-operation with groups such as the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, HELP (German NGO) and the Mine Education Group to identify groups of children and families who will benefit. It is hoped that, in certain areas, C2i will also help with cluster bomb awareness through performances.
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The performers have raised the money to cover their own travel and in-country expenses but money is needed for the following:
1. Equipment, such as parachutes for games.
2. Circus toys. Supporters have made a lot of juggling sacks which are unfilled, for ease of carrying, so we will need to buy a lot of filling on arrival in Iraq. We would like to bring more toys as these were identified as one of the main needs for children in the IDP camps, who didn’t even have footballs or soft toys.
3. Humanitarian goods to give to the families of the children – although the circus is a project in its own right, where there is such desperate need we would like to be able to give blankets, clothes, gas, medicines and so on.
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Donation info is at the bottom of this story...if you are interested.


This site belongs to Jo Wilding who works with ElectronicIraq @ this link:

http://electroniciraq.net/news/abouttheproject.shtml