A poster at one of my favorite bookstores advertised that The Tales of the Beedle Bard by J.K. Rowling was going to be available this December at their stores nationwide. So, when December 1 came, I enthusiastically dropped by only to find out that the store already had the books in stock but could not release them until December 4. (I should have done my research first.)Anyway, as luck had it, I passed by the mall last Thursday and got my personal copy at 10% off, since it was on its maiden launch. The original price of P545.00 was slashed down to P490.50.
The ones currently being sold here bear the hard-bound U.S. cover of the standard edition book, also illustrated by Mary GrandPre, the illustrator of the U.S. edition Harry Potter novels. (There are only 7 of the limited edition, which were bound in brown morocco leather, ornamented with silver trinkets studded with semiprecious stones.)
Since my schedule wouldn't allow me to read its contents for now, I contented myself with reading the back cover. Aside from the already half-expected brief introduction of the book, what caught my eye was the paragraph written in small letters: "This purchase also represents another very important form of giving: From every sale of this book, Scholastic will give its net proceeds to the CHILDREN'S HIGH LEVEL GROUP, a charity cofounded in 2005 by J.K. Rowling and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, MEP. CHG campaigns to protect and promote children's rights and make life better for vulnerable young people. www.chlg.org"Like the curious cat that I am, I googled and wiki'd my way to find out more about this charity group. This is where I first came across the word "Deinstitutionalization."
Based on thefreedictionary.com's definition, I found out the following:
1. To remove the status of an institution from.
2. To release (a mental health patient, for example) from an institution for placement and care in the community.
Though I understood what these meant, it was still unclear to me how these would exactly apply to children.. Did it mean that the charity was only limited to mentally ill children? Why would people want to remove poor children from institutions? It was then that I read from http://www.chlg.org/who-we-are.asp what it actually all meant. It's actually pretty cool, and I think it's taking "helping" to a higher level. By checking how traditional forms of "help" have affected recipients through their lifetimes, we can now think of better ways to deal with the present generation. In summary, here are a few things I was able to gather:
- In Europe, around 1 million children live in large institutions, but contrary to popular belief, only 4% of these children are actually orphans.
- Around 96% of these children are away from home either because their families are poor, disabled or from ethnic minorities who do not have access to proper help which the children need.
- Deinstitutionalization or "de-institutionalisation" is important because there are alternative ways of helping these children without having to take them away from their families. It also helps in preventing the abandonment of children, especially at an early age.
- In fact, one goal is to work closely with highest ranking officials and decision-makers, so that policies with real and lasting change can be put into place. For example, in Romania, it is now prohibited to institutionalize children under 2 years old.
- Their work includes making people more aware of the effects of institutionalization, e.g. how children who grew up in institutions tend to become more depressive, more susceptible to drugs, etc.
- With some of the available programs, children from the mainstream schools are paired with children from institutions, giving them a chance to interact with each other, in the hopes of breaking social prejudices and barriers.
For more information, visit:
http://www.chlg.org
http://www.chernobyl-international.com/what_we_do/de_institutionalisation.546.html
http://www.kent.ac.uk/tizard/About/about.html
