Amway Slovenia UNICEF partnership
Some believe that flows naturally in tightly knit Slovenia, where it seems practically everyone knows someone in everyone else’s family. And Amway has always thrived on strong family bonds.
Good families make a priority of their children. So it is with Amway in Slovenia, where the company and its more than 14,000 IBOs have led private sector support for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
UNICEF’s national field office in Slovenia is a busy place, overseeing a host of ongoing projects to help children, both at home and around the world.
Two that have received strong support from Amway are the Adopt a Doll and Save a Child Project and Project Speak Up! Adopt a Doll raises money for immunization shots in poor countries and Speak Up! aims to prevent bullying in Slovenian schools.
Adopt a Doll
Once a week, Aleuka Sterle, a retired physical therapist, meets downtown in the capital city of Ljubljana with other retired women volunteers to make little girls’ — and even boys’ — dreams come true. Using donated materials and inspired imaginations, Aleuka and her friends have created a throng of stunning rag dolls — more than 100 so far — and no two alike.
UNICEF sells the dolls for 17 Euros, exactly enough to pay for a series of six vaccinations needed to protect a child from common and preventable diseases: diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, polio, tuberculosis and tetanus. Each doll carries an I.D. card including the name of the maker, and a post card the doll’s new “parent” is asked to mail back to the maker, assuring her that a good home has been found.
“I got one card from a little adopted boy in Ljubljana who told me ‘It makes me happy every day,’” said a beaming Aleuka, who said it takes her a few hours to make each doll.
The women say their inspiration for the endlessly varied dolls comes from everywhere.
“Every morning I get on the bus and look at people and their faces for ideas on how I can make the dolls,” said Berta Kladnik, another volunteer.
Seniors’ groups aren’t the only places where rag doll “adoption” plays a role in raising both funds and awareness of the plight of poor children around the world. UNICEF also has a program for pre-school classes, such as this one. Each class starts the year with two dolls, one for sale or “adoption” to pay for vaccinations of a poor child – and one for the class to share throughout the year.
Teachers say this doll, whom the kids named Metka, has been a great tool for social development in and out of the classroom. All through the year the children take turns taking Metka home, where they “entertain” her and help her get to know their families. They’re required to sit down with their parents to make diary entries about the family’s activities with the doll. These are then read aloud at school.
“We’ve found that once the doll is home for the weekend families do even more with their children because they have to have something to put in the diary,” said Lenka Vojnovic, UNICEF advocacy officer.
The doll they give up for “adoption,” i.e., sale -- always a sad day at school – helps teachers explain in a meaningful way how there are poor children elsewhere in the world who will be better off because of the students’ contribution.
Speak Up!
School shootings make the headlines and evening news on TV but bullying – both physical and emotional – is a far more common problem in schools. That’s true around the world and Slovenia is no exception. Research shows more than 20 percent of children there reported being bullied on a regular basis and 45 percent suffer some form of it.
Amway has helped UNICEF sponsor pilot programs in Slovenia to teach kids how to stop bullying the best way, before it ever starts.
These fifth-graders, for example, are playing a “game” designed to help them know first-hand the importance of saying nice things about each other and about how it feels when that doesn’t happen.
Each child in the class tapes a blank sheet to their back. All the other children write facts about or descriptions of each other on the sheets, but no one is supposed to know who wrote what, though sometimes they can tell. After the writing, all the kids and the teacher sit down to talk about what was written and how it made them feel.
If there’s a problem – and one boy here wrote that another was “ugly,” prompting a wounded verbal retort that the first boy was “short,” which prompted a thrown punch – they have a discussion and try to work things out. Should someone be punished? If so, how? What’s fair?
“This is the time and place for conversations about these kinds of things,” said Saro Lejar, a UNICEF consultant who trains teachers and school staff. “Somebody might get hurt once in a while but they all learn that it’s better to talk about it than to be silent and look for a chance to retaliate.”
Teachers and school administrators say there’s been a clear improvement in class behavior and atmosphere since the program started two years ago.
The boys here patched up their differences, with a little help from the teacher, who talked with them about the hurtful power of words.
“She did very well,” said Lejar of the teacher, Marja Godler. “Some teachers would just say ‘Oh, forget about it.’ To really understand this problem and get to the root of it, it’s very important for the kids to talk about it openly.”
