children
Material from:How To Publish A Childrens Book
In the months following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, relief organizations have been clamoring to provide basic necessities like food, clean water, medical supplies and shelter to Haitians affected by the disaster.
Instead of supplies, one two-man volunteer team is providing something altogether different for Haitian children. The Haiti Kids Kino Project, sponsored by the U.K.-based nonprofit art center Cube Cinema, is providing outdoor film screenings for Haitian communities. So far, volunteers Marko Wilkinson and David Fitzsimmons have shown popular films such as “Up” and “WALL-E” to hundreds of Haitian kids.
For the children, many of whom were traumatized by the earthquake and the experience of losing family members, friends and homes, attending a film screening is a welcome break from reality.
Patrick McCormick, emergencies communication officer for the UN, said: “The worst thing for children in natural disasters isn't just the damage that they see around them, but also when they sit around with nothing to do. It ramps up anxiety and despair, and that's what does even more damage.”
The creators of the Haiti Kids Kino Project hope to make the effort into an ongoing, sustainable project. They are encouraging the public to make donations and host fundraisers to support their work.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is scrambling to fix a potential problem with a much-touted benefit of its new health care law, a gap in coverage improvements for children in poor health, officials said Tuesday.
Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday.
However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now. For example, if a child has asthma, the insurance company cannot write a policy that excludes that condition from coverage. The new safeguard will be in place later this year.
In recent speeches, Obama has given the impression that the immediate benefit for kids is much more robust.
Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That's the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.
Obama's public statements conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were sweeping and straightforward.
“This is a patient's bill of rights on steroids,” the president said Friday at George Mason University in Virginia. “Starting this year, thousands of uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions will be able to purchase health insurance, some for the very first time. Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.”
And Saturday, addressing House Democrats as they approached a make-or-break vote on the bill, Obama said: “This year … parents who are worried about getting coverage for their children with pre-existing conditions now are assured that insurance companies have to give them coverage – this year.”
Late Tuesday, the administration said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would try to resolve the situation by issuing new regulations. The Obama administration interprets the law to mean that kids can't be denied coverage, as the president has said repeatedly.
Gregory Parker