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EveryChild in Daily Mail on Malawi orphans

18 Jun 2009

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The Daily Mail today features an opinion piece by Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive of EveryChild, commenting on alternatives to intercountry adoption and children’s homes in Malawi in answer to the HIV and AIDS crisis.

"It has been the work of my charity, EveryChild, to focus on giving the support and financial aid which helps families stay together. We advise on parenting skills. We try to nurture in relatives charged with caring for their families, self-belief in their capacity to be good parents. Grinding poverty does not deprive them of the right to raise their children. It does not diminish their capacity to love them.

Yet this is the negative message Madonna is sending out to financially hard-pressed communities the world over. It is a damagingly destructive one. It also undermines the aims of my own charity. Because she seems to be making a simple yet pernicious equation: she is saying, ‘If you are poor you cannot look after your kids.”

Read the full article in the Daily Mail