Charity helps refugees

A friendship between a Kiwi soldier and two ragged children in Afghanistan has inspired a charity based in Palmerston North.

Teacher James Lowry founded the For Better Initiative to help refugees in New Zealand get extra help to bring them up to speed in the classroom.

Lowry toured Afghanistan as a rifleman with the army in 2009. In one village two youngsters were regulars among the groups of children who would run alongside the soldiers’ convoys, and crowd them if they stopped.

‘‘Every town we went to, every village, we were flocked by kids, and they were asking for one thing, ’pen bakshish’, which is ‘can I please have a pen?’

‘‘These two were about 4 and 6, and you could see on their faces that life was pretty hard, but they always had smiles on their faces and were friendly. The limited conversations we did have through interpreters, they wanted a pen for school, to draw.

‘‘I started thinking about what they are up to now, it’s always been at the back of my head.’’

After leaving the army Lowry became a teacher. He volunteered to help refugee families settle into the community and realised there needed to be more help for pupils who had a second chance after coming to New Zealand.

‘‘The journey refugee children go through to get to a settlement country is quite a long, drawn-out process. Their lives are disjointed and gaps can appear in their learning. They are pulled out of school, say at age 6, and then reintegrated into an education system in a new country aged 11.

‘‘[What is needed] varies for each child, but with more resources we could do greater things.’’

Lowry hopes to find 1000 longterm sponsors to donate $1 a week. Schools can apply for grants to provide help for refugee children. ‘‘It allows them to design that programme for the needs of that student.’’

Scholarships will also be set up to encourage teens to complete bridging courses, instead of going straight from school to university.