Eastenders actress Samantha Womack was in Burma last month to highlight the issue of child poverty for the charity ActionAid. She is now sharing her experiences, in the hope that it will inspire others to do their bit for the less fortunate during ActionAid’s first ever Child Sponsorship Week (November 12-18).
We all know Samantha Womack as the face of Ronnie Branning in TV soap EastEnders. But besides being a multi-talented stage and television actress, singer and director, Samantha now has an additional off-screen role to play –that of sponsor to a 13-year-old Burmese girl named Nendar.
Samantha first met Nendar on a recent trip to Burma (Myanmar), where she had gone to see firsthand the work that anti-poverty charity ActionAid is doing to improve the quality of life for children there.
In this politically fraught country, living conditions can be destitute at best for many vulnerable young people, which is why, for the first time, ActionAid is implementing a child sponsorship scheme in the region. Samantha visited villages and schools and interacted with the children and women there to gain a full understanding of how child sponsorship makes a huge difference to the lives of children and their communities in Burma.
She tells of schools which have no proper structure, let alone infrastructure: one primary school she visited had no proper floor and teachers were teaching six different grades all at once, with children sharing desks and seats. Samantha also recounts her meeting with Kyn Sern, who, with a small loan of $100 from ActionAid, was able to provide her children with food in the long-term. With the loan, Kyn bought a pig, which had piglets, which she then sold to earn her enough money to support her family.
There were a number of other emotive stories which had an effect on Samantha.The case of one woman-who had no choice but to live above her brother’s kitchen with her four children, one of whom was still a baby, because the law allowed property to be inherited only by men- was particularly upsetting.
But the story that touched her the most was that of 13-year-old Nendar from Kan Net village in the Magwe region. Nendar had to drop out of school under grim circumstances: her father was an alcoholic and her mother had left home to earn money, which left Nendar no option but to beg for pennies to keep her alcoholic father content. Samantha was heartbroken by Nendar’s plight and took on the role of sponsoring her.
If it had not been for the work of ActionAid, Nendar could well have become yet another statistic in the child sex worker trade. As Samantha explains, “Her situation felt so hopeless and was so perilous. She desperately wanted to go back to school, and was in danger of being recruited into sex work. I found it really difficult not to get upset.” Now, with the sponsorship scheme, Nendar will be able to attend school again and has hope for a brighter future.
It seemed to Samantha that Burmese children have been forgotten by most of the world. As a mother of two children herself, she wanted to visit the country and promote ActionAid’s new sponsorship programme to change the situation. “Some of the poorest children and their communities will benefit directly from child sponsorship. The smallest and most practical of changes, a bridge, new books, transportation, or providing resources for children to go to school, 0-will make all the difference. Now that it’s been allowed to happen, it will unlock their futures.”
But this is not the end of extreme poverty; in fact, it’s just the beginning to an end. There are thousands of forgotten children who also need help. ActionAid is requesting that people across the UK celebrate Child Sponsorship Week, and help to make a difference to the lives of those who have endured decades of struggle, uncertainty and poverty in Burma, and elsewhere in the developing world. For just 50p a day, you, as a sponsor, can save a child’s life and build a community’s future.
For more information, or to sponsor a child, visit http://www.actionaid.org.uk/child
