The charities

Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is delighted to be the main beneficiary charity for the eighth consecutive year at the Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon. Mercy Corps is an international development charity that works in 41 countries worldwide helping people to turn the crises of natural disaster, poverty and conflict into opportunities for progress.

This year ...

This year the Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon will be supporting an incredible project Mercy Corps is running in Colombia — this project is helping to prevent children being recruited as child soldiers into local armed groups whilst supporting ex-child soldiers to be reintegrated back into their own communities.

The Need:

Child Soldiers in Colombia

Colombia has been embroiled in a civil war for over 50 years. One of the major side effects of this civil war has been the recruitment of children into the many armed groups. Last year the Colombian government announced it believed that up to 8,000 children were still caught up with armed organisations in the country, however independent estimates report this figure to be nearer 14,000 children.

The Issues:

Poverty, abuse, lack of education and the ease of access armed groups have to children in their local communities all contribute to the recruitment process. Some children join of their own initiative, trying to escape their present living environment with the belief they will be joining a group that offers food, shelter, safety and wages. They are given false promises of freedom, wealth and respect — in actual fact they become trapped, reliant on the group for survival and feared by their own communities. This is alongside suffering continued abuse. Other children are forced into recruitment — literally kidnapped of the street or from their homes by members of an armed group at the end of a school day.

Armed groups use children as porters to transports arms, as informants, cooks and sex slaves. Those who survive are later trained as fighters. If children do manage to escape the army, they are often left terrorised, unable to reintegrate and function in their local community.

How will the 2012 Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon help?

The 2012 Quadrathlon will help to fight this trend of child recruitment by funding project that encompasses two strands of assistance — preventing at-risk children from being recruited into armed groups and helping ex-child soldiers re-integrate into society.

In February 2011, Mercy Corps began a two year project in response to the increasingly high recruitment rate of child soldiers in the Putumayo and Cali districts of Colombia. As well as directly benefitting 2,300 at risk children, their family members, community members, teachers and carers, the project will additionally indirectly benefit a further 12,090 people.

Recruitment Prevention:

The project will work with local schools to develop after school programmes, promote community work and positive parenting to help educate children against recruitment. It will also work with the government to build capacity and develop and promote its child welfare policies to prevent recruitment whilst re-integrating child soldiers back into the community.

Reintegration:

The project will work with local community groups and existing institutions to improve their capacity to offer programmes to effectively promote the rehabilitation and re-integration of ex-child soldiers. It will offer income generation and training to families of ex-child soldiers to help reintegrate their children back into the community. Additionally the project will run training workshops on gender and gender-based violence for ex-child soldiers.

The Impact:

This project will be made possible through the funds raised by the 2012 Quadrathlon. Every penny raised will be helping at-risk children from becoming further engulfed — or who have already been consumed — by the civil conflict that has plagued their country since before they were born.

And as if this alone wasn’t inspiring enough for you to take on the Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon ...

The funds you raise will have 5 times the value for Mercy Corps!

The European Commission has already committed €937,324 of the total budget for this project, conditional on Mercy Corps securing the remaining £200,000.

Therefore every £1 you raise will generate a further £4 in funding from the European Commission!

Last year ...

The 2011 Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon is on track to raise over £240,000 for Mercy Corps which triggers match funding from the European Commission taking total project funds to over £1 million to help prevent starvation and provide income for people in Timor-Leste — the poorest country in Asia.

This project will be running for another year before completion. It is set to reach 22,500 people in two of the most vulnerable districts in the country, helping them to break out of the cycle of poverty by growing sustainable crops and generating an income for their families.

The programme is working with small-scale farmers, providing technical support and specialised training to make sure families and communities develop sustainable agricultural yields to provide for themselves and for future generations.

We will be keeping you up to date with its continued success.

All of us a Mercy Corps thank you for your support. It really will make a difference to thousands of lives.

For further information about Mercy Corps please visit www.mercycorps.org.uk