ChildFund Australia release life changing Impact Report creating hope for thousands across the Pacific and Southeast Asia

• ChildFund Australian received $48M income and created 73 projects delivered across Cambodia, Loas, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, The Philippines and within Pacific Island nations throughout the last financial year.
• Close to 150,000 children received critical support in the areas of Health, Education, Child Protection, Disaster Risk Reduction and Social and Emotional Learning.
• Approximately 120,000 Women and girls received protective services, access to vital medicine and pre and post-natal care and education and learning services through the period.

 (Sydney, Australia). The 2023 ChildFund Australia Impact Report highlights some of the incredible stories of resilience from across the Pacific, Southeast Asia and around the world. Throughout the year, ChildFund have been instrumental in providing critical services to children and communities in nations that are under increasing economic pressure. 

Images from the Impact Report 

As the world continues to battle challenging economic times, those hardest hit are often in the most disadvantage countries. Rising inflation, climate change, the persistence of COVID19 and political instability continue to create challenges, but youth are resilient and committed to creating a better future. This Impact Report tells the important stories of a handful of individuals who are determined to provide a better future, both for themselves and their community. 

Stories like that of Maria, 21 from Papua New Guinea, a country with one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. Maria talks about the grief of losing her baby and how she overcame the emotional distress through connecting with others in the program. “Once I joined the group it helped me,” Maria said. “It made me feel like I was going to be OK.” 

Maria learnt emotional and social skills to build her resilience to overcome everyday conflicts and challenges. “I learnt that I could share my experience with other girls,” she said. “We need to have good peers and good friends.” 

The Report also highlights the experience of fifteen-year-old Seila from Cambodia who dreams of becoming a teacher. However, from the age of nine Seila had a cyst on his hip that prevented him from walking or riding his bike the 10km journey to attend school. ChildFund were able to fund surgery and a brace for his leg giving him greater mobility and school attendance. “Now that I’m going to school regularly, I’m doing better at my studies,” he said. “I placed sixth out of 28 students this year.” 

ChildFund CEO Margaret Sheehan reflected on the work completed across the region and the impact of the organisation in difficult times. 

“The global environment is placing increasing pressure on us all. As the cost-of-living increases at home and overseas, it creates a pressure cooker environment in our ability to continue vital programs to uphold basic human rights around the world.” 

“We thank our community and donors here in Australia and around the world for their generous contributions to ChildFund and their help in delivering all we have achieved this year. With ongoing 

support, we look forward to continuing to provide these essential services to even more people in the coming year,” she concluded. 

To read this years Impact Report click here

When will our regulators step in and end industry self-regulation when it comes to our online privacy? Selfregulation will not protect our privacy and most importantly it will not protect the privacy of our children.

Across 2022, we have seen some world leading examples of poor data management by corporate Australia.

The private sector has been trusted to safeguard our privacy and it’s safe to say they failed. But what did we learn from the experience?

Just last month industry codes designed largely by big tech were submitted to the eSafety Commissioner for consideration.

These codes are required to protect the safety of our children online.

They will not succeed.

Some may find it unsurprising that the very same industry that profits from children’s data have chosen to design codes that result in unacceptably lower standards of protection for children in Australia, than protection set in many other jurisdictions around the world.

Australia should be the safest place in the world to go online but it’s not. The UK, Ireland and even in the home of big tech, California, they have put in place regulators to draft codes rather than trusting industry.

The codes drafted in these regions have some clear differences.

When children register for an account overseas, the default setting is ‘Private’ until 18. In Australia, industry has set the age at 16, offering greater opportunities to commercially exploit young people.

In another example, overseas GPS location default settings in under 18 accounts are ‘Must not Collect’. At home the setting is ‘Must not Broadcast’ meaning the collection of historic locations can be collected for those 16 years and under.

The third and perhaps most concerning development in these codes is the attempt by the tech sector to somewhat sidestep mandatory reporting requirements on child sexual exploitation material legislated in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

The question here is why should our community hold big tech to a lower standard than small businesses, clubs and childcare centres?

Furthermore, Australians don’t believe that the new industry codes pass the pub test. YouGov polling found that 71 per cent of Australian adults did not trust the social media industry to draft codes.

And 73 per cent said they would prefer regulators to draft codes around children’s online safety.

We are calling on the Albanese Government and the eSafety Commissioner to take control and protect our children. We must question the self-interest of the private sector. The future of Australia’s youth is at stake.

Margaret Sheehan is CEO of ChildFund Australia

Daily Telegraph, Sydney 14/12/2022