Friends help raise money for War Child
Last year saw a 21% increase in ‘grave violations’ against children in conflict situations.
Quakers in Devon have helped raise £1,200 for children displaced by conflict. Hilary Prentice, from Totnes Meeting, and Steve Day and Stephen Sterling, from Ashburton Meeting, were part of the War Child benefit concerts performed by the Occasional Liberation Music Orchestra & Viva Choir this summer.
Kumar Satkunarasa, challenge and community fundraising manager, thanked all the participants for their ‘fantastic concerts’ and said: ‘The money you have raised will help the charity to reach children as quickly as possible when conflict breaks out and stay long after the cameras have gone, to support them through their recovery. It will help us to protect and educate children, and support them to heal and learn, for a safer, brighter future. Because one child caught up in conflict is one child too many.’
Steve Day thanked those who took part for ‘keeping the faith’ and ‘sticking with these “off the wall concerts”.’ He said: ‘£1,200 doesn’t stop wars, but it does go just a little way to making a difference to kids caught up in adult conflicts.’
The charity has recently launched a petition calling on the new prime minister to ‘prioritise an immediate and permanent ceasefire and insist vital aid supplies be let into Gaza’.
War Child has also highlighted the 2023 Children in Armed Conflict Report, released in June by the UN secretary general. Last year saw a twenty-one per cent rise in ‘grave violations’ recorded against children. Of these, 30,705 were committed in 2023, and 2,285 were committed earlier but verified in 2023. The most violations were verified in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and the Sudan.
