children

Catalan government denounces the “intolerable” acts

Government orders transferral to special welcoming centres, but child services overwhelmed

Those under 16 most affected population, according to the Catalan Statistics Institute (Idescat)

The 34th edition will feature events for children, families, and professionals, and focus on the eight great genres of literature

1 in 2 victims of sexual assault are under 18, according to the NGO

Catalonia invests a half million euros in promoting children's reading

More than 120 media outlets will cover the 26th edition of the Castells Competition, taking place this weekend at the Tàrraco Arena Place, an old bullring located in Tarragona, southern Catalonia. This year’s edition will become an international window for Catalan culture as 380 journalists from China, Australia, United Kingdom, America and all around the globe have been accredited and will witness the event. 32 human tower groups (‘colles’) will perform, one of them from China: the Children of Hangzhou. Tarragona’s Mayor, Josep Fèlix Ballesteros, stated that this international media presence proves that the impact of castells “goes beyond our territory and is global”. More than 25,000 people will attend the competition this weekend, in an edition that is expected to be the most international and historic one, due to the high level of the human tower groups. 

A 13-year old pupil has entered his classroom carrying a crossbow on Monday morning in Barcelona. The pupil first attacked his teacher and a student who happened to be the daughter of the teacher. Then, he fatally stabbed a substitute teacher who came after hearing people screaming. The 4 people wounded are not in a serious condition. The young aggressor has been arrested and transferred to a psychiatric unit of the Sant Joan de Déu children’s hospital. According to the Spanish Penal Code, any minor under 14 cannot be charged with a crime. All schools and high schools in Catalonia will hold 5 minutes of silence on Tuesday. The Catalan Government has declared 1 official day of mourning and has suspended all official events for this Monday and Tuesday.

FC Barcelona Foundation, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympafrica Foundation signed an agreement on Wednesday to extend the ‘FutbolNet’ pilot project in 34 African countries. 100,000 African children will benefit from the project each year. The agreement extends the initiative until at least 2016, after an initial pilot experience that run from April to June 2013. It is the first time that the IOC has ever signed an alliance with a sports club’s foundation. The Olympafrica FutbolNet Cup is a series of football tournaments with values based on the methodology used by the FC Barcelona Foundation.

The Catalan club’s Board have approved the motion to extend the alliance with the UN body until the end of their term in office, which lasts until 2016. FC Barcelona has agreed, as it has done in recent years, to donate €1.5 million euros a year to joint projects with Unicef, which involve the promotion of education and sport among vulnerable children. Barça and the United Nations first joined forces in September 2006. The current deal was due to end in 2014. “We are very satisfied with this alliance”, stated the  Board Spokesman and Secretary, Toni Freixa.

Last week, the Catalan Ombudsman issued a report stating that 4% of children in Catalonia under the age of 16 suffer from food deprivation (50,000 children) and he linked it to the current economic crisis. The Primary Care section of the Catalan Society of Paediatrics refutes the Ombudsman’s report warning that the known cases of undernourished children in Catalonia are due to illness and not to financial problems. They stated there are 750 children with food deprivation and most of whom have chronic diseases that cause malnutrition, such as metabolic disorders, neoplasia or anorexia nervosa. They emphasise that nowadays it is incorrect to talk about children with food deprivation in Catalonia for economic reasons, but they are concerned about the future.

The Catalan Ombudsman, Rafael Ribó, announced on Monday that 4% of children under the age of 16 suffer from food deprivation. Almost 50,000 children are not eating meat or fish at least once every two days, meaning they do not have a sufficient intake of protein. However, Ribó rejected there was a structural problem of malnutrition and linked the phenomenon to the economic crisis’ effects. Ribó asked the Catalan Government to act immediately to ensure that all children have access to enough food. The Ombudsman proposed 33 recommendations to reduce the child poverty rate, which currently stands at 28%, with approximately 345,000 children under the age of 16 living in poverty. The rate of extreme poverty has also increased in recent years and affects a tenth of Catalan children (130,000).

All towns in Catalonia welcome the arrival of the Three Wise Men on the 5th of January. Children and parents gather on the streets throughout the country to greet the Kings from the East in an enormous display of colour, sweets and presents that cannot fail to delight everyone. The Three Wise Men often travel by camel, but they have also been known to visit some towns using floats, classic cars, boats or even helicopters! Catalan children are very excited that night, because this is the “magical night” on which they traditionally receive their big Christmas presents – although some also get presents from other magic figures such as Santa or the very Catalan tradition of the ‘caga tió’ on the 24th of December.

The Barcelona-based Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) has identified two proteins that block the metastasis of rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of cancer that represents 8% of this sort of illness in children. These two proteins are related to cellular proliferation and growth as well as having the capacity to migrate to other organs. The study opens the door to the development of new treatments targeting these two proteins. The study was funded by the foundation of the Catalan Public TV Broadcaster and it has been published in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC).

English Summer S.A. has been organising English language immersion camps for kids for 30 years. This summer, Jiajia Wang Liu is organising a new concept for the company: a Chinese language summer camp. Wang Liu is an entrepreneur who came from China when she was 8. She studied economics at the Pompeu Fabra University and at Harvard. Nowadays, she has her own publishing house and a lot of projects on the go.