Education for children in conflict and emergencies
Education in Conflict Affected Fragile States
by Save the Children, UK
Every world leader has committed themselves to getting every child into school by 2015. We should be almost halfway to meeting this Millennium Development Goal, yet at the current rate of progress this isn’t going to happen.
The number of out-of-school primary aged children in the world dramatically fell from over 100 million to 77 million in 2006. Yet this drop has not been seen in countries affected by conflict, where 39 million children remain without an education.
This is because donors give the least amount of aid for education to the countries most in need of it - conflict affected countries.
Until the necessary amount of aid for education is targeted at the countries that need it he most – conflict affected countries the Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all will be deemed a failure.
Save the Children are calling for world donors to:
▪ Put the millennium development goal of education for all back on track by ensuring that aid for education reaches countries affected by conflict.
▪ To provide an extra US $5.2 billion in aid to fund education in conflict affected countries.
▪ To support the education cluster so that education is part of every humanitarian response in an emergency.
Education in an Emergency
Save the Children want education to be part of every humanitarian response in a crisis along with food, shelter and protection.
Humanitarian disasters and conflict leaves children particularly vulnerable. Many will have been forced to flee their homes, witnessed destruction or violence, and be vulnerable to diseases, exploitation and death.
Teaching children how to recognise unexploded bombs, avoid new dangers such as contaminated water and cope with the trauma they’ve been exposed to is a
vital part of any humanitarian response. Education can do this yet in emergencies it is often overlooked.
Education can easily be wiped out in an emergency. Schools can be destroyed, teachers flee and funding is diverted. The longer education is left out of an emergency response the longer it takes to replace.
In recent years humanitarian funding has increased from US $1.6 billion in 2000 to US$8.5 billion in 2005 in line with the increased number of emergencies. Yet these resources are not sufficient enough to cover needs, making prioritisation and allocation of scarce resources a dilemma for humanitarian donors and leaving education without the support it needs.
The recent endorsement by the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Inter-Agency Standing Committee of an education cluster approach could and should be a catalyst for this to change. It is expected that this formation, expected towards the end of this month (April) will make education part of every emergency response, ensure a coordinated and effective response and attract adequate funding.
FACTS: Children living in conflict:
▪ In 2003 more than half of armed conflicts used combatants under the age of 15
▪ 1 in 3 children in conflict affected countries miss out on education.
▪ Save the Children estimates that about 5.3 million primary aged children (6-11 years) and six million 12-17 year old adolescents are out-of-school in the DRC. This is one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world.
▪ In Nepal, between January and August 2005, more than 11,800 students were abducted from rural schools for indoctrination or forced recruitment into the militia.
▪ In Afghanistan, most qualified teachers fled the conflict. Now fewer than 15% of teachers hold professional qualifications. 60% of girls aged 7-13 are out of school.
▪ In Angola almost half of the countries children (44%) do not attend school. Many girls leave school to become servants, sell goods or to marry. Many children disabled by war are also excluded.
2. Support for launch of Save the Children’s campaign
Jan Egeland, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, said: “It is a moral outrage how the world is treating these children. The international community cannot leave vulnerable children, already living with the consequences of armed conflict, without the hope of a decent future. Children cannot wait for conflict to end before we give them the opportunity to go to school.”
Jasmine Whitbread, Save the Children UK Chief Executive, said: “This is a crisis that the world is choosing to ignore. Today, millions of children face the prospect of being recruited and forced to fight, exploited as cheap labour and are more at risk of being trafficked and abused, all because they can’t go to school. “These children live in the hardest to reach countries, in the harshest conditions - the mandate for where aid efforts must be focused. Yet, those with the power, knowledge and resources are failing to intervene because they won’t address the difficulties preventing them from delivering aid to the children who need it." Whitbread continued: “Unless we ensure that aid for education reaches children affected by conflict, their futures - and the future of their nations - will remain bleak.”
For more information, interviews, VNR, case studies, contact Save the Children Media Unit on 0207 012 68413
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
Monday, April 23, 2007
DFID :: Press Release :: 5th April 2007
Delivering Education Beyond Borders
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, today set out their vision for delivering education to children affected by conflict or living in fragile states.
In a speech in Gleneagles, Gordon Brown said:
“We will do for education what the Red Cross and Medicine Sans Frontiers achieve for health and seek to provide education not just in places of comfort and peace but everywhere in the world - behind frontiers in conflict zones and fragile states.
“Some children can spend their lives living in conflict, or refugee camps, and if we do not reach out to these children, we will miss a generation.
“We need an Education Beyond Borders initiative that will help ensure that education needs are met in humanitarian emergencies, with a coordinated approach and rapid deployment of education experts led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
“We will provide additional UK support for education in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Somalia, Afghanistan, Nepal, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia. And we must mobilize the political will to deliver education for all children, including those in conflict, at the High Level Education Event, hosted by the European Commission, in May.”
Hilary Benn said:
“More than 75 million children do not go to school every day across the world. 30 million of these are in countries affected by conflict.
“To meet our collective aim of getting every child into primary education by 2015, and our commitment to provide greater support to fragile and conflict-affected states, this newinitiative will providing a vital boost of funds, support and expertise to bring education to those made most vulnerable by conflict.”
UK support to the new initiative includes:
• a £20m grant to UNICEF, to deliver education in emergency, conflict and post-crisis countries, and to support the UN humanitarian cluster for education;
• a new rapid response capability to deploy skilled education professionals in humanitarian emergencies;
• financial support for education in conflict and post-conflict states, including Nepal (£60m to 2015), Burundi (£6m over 3 years), Sierra Leone (£9m over 4 years) and Somalia (£9m over 3 years);
• support for the education recovery programme in Liberia, via the multi-donor Fast Track Catalytic Fund;
• if conditions permit, £50m for education in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is an urgent need to restore confidence in the political process and democracy;
• further support to education in Afghanistan via the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund; and
• support to the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) to ensure that support is delivered effectively and flexibly to fragile, conflict and post-conflict states.
The new initiative announced today is built on the approach of ensuring that education is an integral part of humanitarian assistance and building the capacity of UNICEF and other UN agencies to deliver education effectively in conflict zones and fragile states. This will mean working with the FTI to deliver improved support for education in post-conflict fragile states and making sure that UK development assistance is committed to support education in fragile and post-conflict states.
Notes to Editors
1. The UK’s £20m grant will be provided to UNICEF to support their activities in emergency and post crisis countries over the next 4/5 years, and will be closely coordinated with the World Bank and bilateral partners, to ensure that the key building blocks for education development in post conflict countries and fragile states are put in place.
2. The new rapid response capacity will take the form of the first global roster for education in emergencies, enabling skilled professionals to be deployed rapidly and effectively to deliver education interventions in humanitarian crisis situations. It will be funded through UNICEF and delivered by UNICEF and Save the Children as part of the UN Cluster for education.
3. The Fast Track Initiative (FTI) is a global partnership between donors and developing countries to accelerate progress towards the Millennium development goal of all children completing primary school by 2015. It has two funds – the EPDF (Education Programme Development Fund), a technical assistance fund, and the CF, the Catalytic Fund. The UK leads the FTI Fragile States task team and will work with partners to bring forward proposals about how the FTI can improve its support for fragile states.
4. UK development assistance in fragile and post-conflict states is already making a difference. The UK supports education in Afghanistan through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). About a quarter of ARTF funding pays the salaries of over 100,000 teachers. This has been vital to increasing the number of children – particularly girls – in school from 2m in 2002 to 6m today.
5. The High-Level Education event of 2 May aims to generate renewed high-level political commitment to finance basic education in an urgent and long term predictable way in order to meet the education MDGs: ensuring all children, worldwide, including those in fragile states, complete primary education by 2015. The event will be hosted in Brussels by the European Commission and co-organized by the UK government and the World Bank. See http://www.promises-on-education.org.
6. The UK defines fragile states as those where the government cannot, or will not, deliver its core functions to the majority of its people, including the poor. DFID has a list of 46 fragile states based on the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessments. There are about 31 million primary school-aged children out of primary school in fragile states. This is about 40% of the total – 77m - of out of school children. The primary enrolment rate in fragile states is 69%.
7. For countries suffering protracted crises, humanitarian aid can become the dominant form of aid over a long period of time. For example, from 1993 – 2004, 73% of UK aid to both Liberia and Somalia was emergency aid (Leader and Colenso, 2005). Education is currently under-funded in humanitarian assistance, even compared to other sectors. For example, in the 2006 UN Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), education was allocated 1.1% of total humanitarian assistance although it represented 4.2% of total needs.
8. The UN Cluster system was introduced in 2005 to improve the predictability, timeliness and effectiveness of response to humanitarian crises. Clusters are intended to redress systemic gaps and strengthen leadership and accountability. The UK supports the introduction of the cluster system for education, which was agreed in December 2006 by the Inter-Agency Committee of the UN and will be co-led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
ENDS
For further information, contact Nic Feron-Low on 020 7023 0533 or 020 7023 0600, e-mail pressoffice@dfid.gov.uk or call our Public Enquiries Point on 0845 300 4100.
DFID News is available on our website at www.dfid.gov.uk
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, today set out their vision for delivering education to children affected by conflict or living in fragile states.
In a speech in Gleneagles, Gordon Brown said:
“We will do for education what the Red Cross and Medicine Sans Frontiers achieve for health and seek to provide education not just in places of comfort and peace but everywhere in the world - behind frontiers in conflict zones and fragile states.
“Some children can spend their lives living in conflict, or refugee camps, and if we do not reach out to these children, we will miss a generation.
“We need an Education Beyond Borders initiative that will help ensure that education needs are met in humanitarian emergencies, with a coordinated approach and rapid deployment of education experts led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
“We will provide additional UK support for education in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Somalia, Afghanistan, Nepal, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia. And we must mobilize the political will to deliver education for all children, including those in conflict, at the High Level Education Event, hosted by the European Commission, in May.”
Hilary Benn said:
“More than 75 million children do not go to school every day across the world. 30 million of these are in countries affected by conflict.
“To meet our collective aim of getting every child into primary education by 2015, and our commitment to provide greater support to fragile and conflict-affected states, this newinitiative will providing a vital boost of funds, support and expertise to bring education to those made most vulnerable by conflict.”
UK support to the new initiative includes:
• a £20m grant to UNICEF, to deliver education in emergency, conflict and post-crisis countries, and to support the UN humanitarian cluster for education;
• a new rapid response capability to deploy skilled education professionals in humanitarian emergencies;
• financial support for education in conflict and post-conflict states, including Nepal (£60m to 2015), Burundi (£6m over 3 years), Sierra Leone (£9m over 4 years) and Somalia (£9m over 3 years);
• support for the education recovery programme in Liberia, via the multi-donor Fast Track Catalytic Fund;
• if conditions permit, £50m for education in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is an urgent need to restore confidence in the political process and democracy;
• further support to education in Afghanistan via the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund; and
• support to the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) to ensure that support is delivered effectively and flexibly to fragile, conflict and post-conflict states.
The new initiative announced today is built on the approach of ensuring that education is an integral part of humanitarian assistance and building the capacity of UNICEF and other UN agencies to deliver education effectively in conflict zones and fragile states. This will mean working with the FTI to deliver improved support for education in post-conflict fragile states and making sure that UK development assistance is committed to support education in fragile and post-conflict states.
Notes to Editors
1. The UK’s £20m grant will be provided to UNICEF to support their activities in emergency and post crisis countries over the next 4/5 years, and will be closely coordinated with the World Bank and bilateral partners, to ensure that the key building blocks for education development in post conflict countries and fragile states are put in place.
2. The new rapid response capacity will take the form of the first global roster for education in emergencies, enabling skilled professionals to be deployed rapidly and effectively to deliver education interventions in humanitarian crisis situations. It will be funded through UNICEF and delivered by UNICEF and Save the Children as part of the UN Cluster for education.
3. The Fast Track Initiative (FTI) is a global partnership between donors and developing countries to accelerate progress towards the Millennium development goal of all children completing primary school by 2015. It has two funds – the EPDF (Education Programme Development Fund), a technical assistance fund, and the CF, the Catalytic Fund. The UK leads the FTI Fragile States task team and will work with partners to bring forward proposals about how the FTI can improve its support for fragile states.
4. UK development assistance in fragile and post-conflict states is already making a difference. The UK supports education in Afghanistan through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). About a quarter of ARTF funding pays the salaries of over 100,000 teachers. This has been vital to increasing the number of children – particularly girls – in school from 2m in 2002 to 6m today.
5. The High-Level Education event of 2 May aims to generate renewed high-level political commitment to finance basic education in an urgent and long term predictable way in order to meet the education MDGs: ensuring all children, worldwide, including those in fragile states, complete primary education by 2015. The event will be hosted in Brussels by the European Commission and co-organized by the UK government and the World Bank. See http://www.promises-on-education.org.
6. The UK defines fragile states as those where the government cannot, or will not, deliver its core functions to the majority of its people, including the poor. DFID has a list of 46 fragile states based on the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessments. There are about 31 million primary school-aged children out of primary school in fragile states. This is about 40% of the total – 77m - of out of school children. The primary enrolment rate in fragile states is 69%.
7. For countries suffering protracted crises, humanitarian aid can become the dominant form of aid over a long period of time. For example, from 1993 – 2004, 73% of UK aid to both Liberia and Somalia was emergency aid (Leader and Colenso, 2005). Education is currently under-funded in humanitarian assistance, even compared to other sectors. For example, in the 2006 UN Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), education was allocated 1.1% of total humanitarian assistance although it represented 4.2% of total needs.
8. The UN Cluster system was introduced in 2005 to improve the predictability, timeliness and effectiveness of response to humanitarian crises. Clusters are intended to redress systemic gaps and strengthen leadership and accountability. The UK supports the introduction of the cluster system for education, which was agreed in December 2006 by the Inter-Agency Committee of the UN and will be co-led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
ENDS
For further information, contact Nic Feron-Low on 020 7023 0533 or 020 7023 0600, e-mail pressoffice@dfid.gov.uk or call our Public Enquiries Point on 0845 300 4100.
DFID News is available on our website at www.dfid.gov.uk
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
A good example :: Sekem
Good works: A lesson from small businesses
By Patrick Blum International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2006
BARCELONA In 1975, Ibrahim Abouleish, the Egyptian-born head of research at an Austrian pharmaceuticals company, took his wife and two children on a holiday to show them his native country. After almost 20 years of studying and working abroad, he was shocked by the poverty that he saw.
Two years later he founded Sekem, a company that would revolutionize Egyptian farming. The company was acclaimed in 2003 by the Right Livelihood organization of Sweden, sometimes known as the alternative Nobel Prize, as "a model for the 21st century, in which commercial success is integrated with and promotes the social and cultural development of society."
Johanna Mair, an assistant professor who teaches general management at Iese, a leading European business school based in Barcelona, cites Sekem as an outstanding example of how an innovative and socially responsible company, grounded in local conditions, can do well by doing good.
"Social entrepreneurs are making a business contribution to sustainable development based on local needs rather than on the centralized assumptions of large institutions or governments," Mair said in an interview. "At the moment there is a lot of action going on in this respect in developing countries."
Sekem, which started from almost nothing on 50 hectares, or 125 acres, of desert land near Bilbeis, a town 60 kilometers, or 36 miles, northeast of Cairo, in 2005 reported a net profit of 10 million Egyptian pounds, or $1.7 million, on sales of 108 million pounds.
Along the way, it has pioneered biodynamic and organic farming methods designed to turn the land into a self- sustaining, self-regulating habitat and has expanded into a business making foods, textiles, pharmaceuticals and health products.
It also provides schools, vocational training, clinics and cultural services for local communities and has worked with the national government since 1990 to encourage the use of organic methods to control pests and improve crop yields - a program that led in 1993 to a ban on crop dusting throughout Egypt.
Mair cites other examples of social entrepreneurship in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their common feature, she said, is that they cater directly to local needs that have not been met by conventional institutions.
Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a pioneer of microcredit, lends to poor rural women who would not qualify as standard bank customers. Its loans, typically for the equivalent of less than $200, help borrowers to develop small, self-sustaining businesses. Started in 1976, the bank counts 5.6 million customers in more than 60,000 villages, according to a January statement on its Web site.
In Kenya, KickStart, founded in 1991, designs low-cost technologies and simple tools that it sells through a chain of retail shops to small businesses. Its product range spans the fields of agriculture, construction, transport and sanitation, and its target customers are local entrepreneurs who may be starting businesses with loans of less than $1,000.
Mair says multinational companies would do well to pay more attention to initiatives like these and the roles of local businesses.
Corporate social responsibility is often too abstract, she said. Chief executives talk about it at conferences but not enough gets transmitted to people lower on the business chain. "What is really missing are the guys who actually do the job, the middle managers, the line managers," she said.
Critics say the corporate social responsibility programs of multinational companies also too often are little more than public relations exercises focused on wealthy home markets.
"Philip Morris has smoking cessation programs in the U.S." as part of their corporate social responsibility program, said Deborah Doane, director of the Corporate Responsibility Coalition in Britain, an umbrella organization for about 130 activist groups. "But they're certainly not doing that in emerging markets, where they're not pressurized to do so."
The idea that companies can save the world and make a profit underestimates how global markets work, Doane added.
Nestlé, for example, sells a fair trade coffee brand that helps small farmers in Ethiopia and El Salvador. "That's probably very good for those smallholders, but it's not having any impact on the overall structural problems of the coffee market," she said.
"We're not suggesting that in some markets there are no incentives to bring about socially responsible behavior, but when you take the globalized competitive environment as a whole, those incentives are few and far between," she added. Responsibility seems to work only "where there is enough pressure being brought to bear."
As long as the primary duty of companies is to their shareholders, finance directors will look only at investments that pay off within two to five years, Doane said. "If you want to make an investment that has a 10-year payoff, it's virtually impossible."
This can change, Doane said, only if corporate governance rules are toughened or if the legal status of companies is changed "to make them stakeholder-based, like some cooperatives, rather than shareholder-based."
An overhaul of corporate law is unlikely to happen fast. In the meantime, the pressure for tougher rules is growing. Still, there is a danger in having too mechanical a view of social responsibility, said Antonio Argandoña, a member of the anti-corruption commission of the International Chamber of Commerce, and associate dean at Iese.
"You have your code of conduct, you publish an annual report on social issues in your company and you have a dialogue with stakeholders. Then you do whatever you want," Argandoña said. "This is why we put a lot of emphasis on personal responsibility. I think people are more conscious today, but I'm not sure they are more responsible."
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
By Patrick Blum International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2006
BARCELONA In 1975, Ibrahim Abouleish, the Egyptian-born head of research at an Austrian pharmaceuticals company, took his wife and two children on a holiday to show them his native country. After almost 20 years of studying and working abroad, he was shocked by the poverty that he saw.
Two years later he founded Sekem, a company that would revolutionize Egyptian farming. The company was acclaimed in 2003 by the Right Livelihood organization of Sweden, sometimes known as the alternative Nobel Prize, as "a model for the 21st century, in which commercial success is integrated with and promotes the social and cultural development of society."
Johanna Mair, an assistant professor who teaches general management at Iese, a leading European business school based in Barcelona, cites Sekem as an outstanding example of how an innovative and socially responsible company, grounded in local conditions, can do well by doing good.
"Social entrepreneurs are making a business contribution to sustainable development based on local needs rather than on the centralized assumptions of large institutions or governments," Mair said in an interview. "At the moment there is a lot of action going on in this respect in developing countries."
Sekem, which started from almost nothing on 50 hectares, or 125 acres, of desert land near Bilbeis, a town 60 kilometers, or 36 miles, northeast of Cairo, in 2005 reported a net profit of 10 million Egyptian pounds, or $1.7 million, on sales of 108 million pounds.
Along the way, it has pioneered biodynamic and organic farming methods designed to turn the land into a self- sustaining, self-regulating habitat and has expanded into a business making foods, textiles, pharmaceuticals and health products.
It also provides schools, vocational training, clinics and cultural services for local communities and has worked with the national government since 1990 to encourage the use of organic methods to control pests and improve crop yields - a program that led in 1993 to a ban on crop dusting throughout Egypt.
Mair cites other examples of social entrepreneurship in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their common feature, she said, is that they cater directly to local needs that have not been met by conventional institutions.
Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a pioneer of microcredit, lends to poor rural women who would not qualify as standard bank customers. Its loans, typically for the equivalent of less than $200, help borrowers to develop small, self-sustaining businesses. Started in 1976, the bank counts 5.6 million customers in more than 60,000 villages, according to a January statement on its Web site.
In Kenya, KickStart, founded in 1991, designs low-cost technologies and simple tools that it sells through a chain of retail shops to small businesses. Its product range spans the fields of agriculture, construction, transport and sanitation, and its target customers are local entrepreneurs who may be starting businesses with loans of less than $1,000.
Mair says multinational companies would do well to pay more attention to initiatives like these and the roles of local businesses.
Corporate social responsibility is often too abstract, she said. Chief executives talk about it at conferences but not enough gets transmitted to people lower on the business chain. "What is really missing are the guys who actually do the job, the middle managers, the line managers," she said.
Critics say the corporate social responsibility programs of multinational companies also too often are little more than public relations exercises focused on wealthy home markets.
"Philip Morris has smoking cessation programs in the U.S." as part of their corporate social responsibility program, said Deborah Doane, director of the Corporate Responsibility Coalition in Britain, an umbrella organization for about 130 activist groups. "But they're certainly not doing that in emerging markets, where they're not pressurized to do so."
The idea that companies can save the world and make a profit underestimates how global markets work, Doane added.
Nestlé, for example, sells a fair trade coffee brand that helps small farmers in Ethiopia and El Salvador. "That's probably very good for those smallholders, but it's not having any impact on the overall structural problems of the coffee market," she said.
"We're not suggesting that in some markets there are no incentives to bring about socially responsible behavior, but when you take the globalized competitive environment as a whole, those incentives are few and far between," she added. Responsibility seems to work only "where there is enough pressure being brought to bear."
As long as the primary duty of companies is to their shareholders, finance directors will look only at investments that pay off within two to five years, Doane said. "If you want to make an investment that has a 10-year payoff, it's virtually impossible."
This can change, Doane said, only if corporate governance rules are toughened or if the legal status of companies is changed "to make them stakeholder-based, like some cooperatives, rather than shareholder-based."
An overhaul of corporate law is unlikely to happen fast. In the meantime, the pressure for tougher rules is growing. Still, there is a danger in having too mechanical a view of social responsibility, said Antonio Argandoña, a member of the anti-corruption commission of the International Chamber of Commerce, and associate dean at Iese.
"You have your code of conduct, you publish an annual report on social issues in your company and you have a dialogue with stakeholders. Then you do whatever you want," Argandoña said. "This is why we put a lot of emphasis on personal responsibility. I think people are more conscious today, but I'm not sure they are more responsible."
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Am I in love with another guy?
Well, if the reason you are checking my blog is to find out if I am in love again since my last break up,- the answer is yes.
I am in love with another guy.. That fast? That soon? ..well, I can't deny the truth, can I? Yes, that fast.
So sorry I just broke the Law of the Break-Ups, rule no.101, violating the rights of a woman to stay single for the minimum of 6 months to a year since her last break-up. Every woman desiring to violate that court order will be sentenced to the next 6 months to one year of brow raising and suspicious gazes until her 6 months, 1 year period has been fulfilled. I shall now undergo such critical demonstrations in real time beginning with this blog entry.
Haha.. very funny.
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
I am in love with another guy.. That fast? That soon? ..well, I can't deny the truth, can I? Yes, that fast.
So sorry I just broke the Law of the Break-Ups, rule no.101, violating the rights of a woman to stay single for the minimum of 6 months to a year since her last break-up. Every woman desiring to violate that court order will be sentenced to the next 6 months to one year of brow raising and suspicious gazes until her 6 months, 1 year period has been fulfilled. I shall now undergo such critical demonstrations in real time beginning with this blog entry.
Haha.. very funny.
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Dear Robin
Hey robin...
I guess you know what happened. I broke up with Jun one month ago. Sorry i didn't inform you earlier. I guess i didn't get online lately. I guess i didn't really take it well. Feel really guilty about it. It's harder for a girl to dump a guy than it is for a guy to dump a girl. I haven't been eating well. No appetite to eat anything either. Everyone is saying i lost weight and all. Some was even afraid that i was having anorexia and told my sis about it.
So many things has happened. I don't know where to start about why i broke up with him and all. But it is over. And there is no way i am going back with him again. I don't trust him and nothing he does will change my mind. As far as i am concerned there are two main reasons- one is, i cannot get along with his family at all and secondly, he is not matured enough for me. I don't like his attitude and I don't have feelings for him anymore.
Its not that i don't like his family. I love them as people but i cannot live with them. We have different cultures. I was brought up with an American environment but he was brought up in the Chinese environment and the two heads just cannot agree. The culture is different and i don't like the way his parents treat their kids. But what can i say about that? I'm just an outsider.
Secondly, he doesn't have the learning attitude. He always think that he is right and is very immature when it comes to making mistakes. He seems to blame everyone but himself. I am not saying this because he likes to blame me, but because he likes to blame everyone. He goes to work and complains about it and quit and work somewhere else, complains about the second company and quits. The same goes for the third and fourth company. He doesn't have what it takes to be a man. When he doesn't do well in his studies, he blames it on the lecturer and on the college. That's just too much. It never seems to be his fault when he doesn't do well. To me, he is still a boy.
But i don't want to waste my time talking about him anymore because i am not interested in him. I sound very cold, don't i? I'm sorry. I guess thats because i can imagine all the things he says about me. This relationship doesn't work out and he is going to blame everything on me.
Alright, so let's chat about something else~! :) hehehehe.... Anna has her serious moments and her happy moments. What a split personality! I just wanted to explain to you. Anyway, whether you want to accept my opinion or not doesn't really matter because i don't have feelings for him anymore. It's over, and i am happy about that. I feel like i have been let out of the golden cage.
Life goes on, doesn't it, Robin? People come and people go and we just have to grow up and accept that. If we don't accept it, we can never go on in life. We will just waste our time looking at the back mirror while we drive. We cannot hold on to the past forever. As far as i am concerned, that book is finished, closed and gone. I am starting a whole new book now. No, I'm not sweeping everything under the carpet. I am simply letting go of the past. And i think letting go is the right thing to do. Don't you?
So what's up these days? Is everything alright? I like chatting with you, I feel like its a place where i can be myself and not have anyone to criticize me for being who i am. Thank you so much, Robin. You're a good friend.
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
I guess you know what happened. I broke up with Jun one month ago. Sorry i didn't inform you earlier. I guess i didn't get online lately. I guess i didn't really take it well. Feel really guilty about it. It's harder for a girl to dump a guy than it is for a guy to dump a girl. I haven't been eating well. No appetite to eat anything either. Everyone is saying i lost weight and all. Some was even afraid that i was having anorexia and told my sis about it.
So many things has happened. I don't know where to start about why i broke up with him and all. But it is over. And there is no way i am going back with him again. I don't trust him and nothing he does will change my mind. As far as i am concerned there are two main reasons- one is, i cannot get along with his family at all and secondly, he is not matured enough for me. I don't like his attitude and I don't have feelings for him anymore.
Its not that i don't like his family. I love them as people but i cannot live with them. We have different cultures. I was brought up with an American environment but he was brought up in the Chinese environment and the two heads just cannot agree. The culture is different and i don't like the way his parents treat their kids. But what can i say about that? I'm just an outsider.
Secondly, he doesn't have the learning attitude. He always think that he is right and is very immature when it comes to making mistakes. He seems to blame everyone but himself. I am not saying this because he likes to blame me, but because he likes to blame everyone. He goes to work and complains about it and quit and work somewhere else, complains about the second company and quits. The same goes for the third and fourth company. He doesn't have what it takes to be a man. When he doesn't do well in his studies, he blames it on the lecturer and on the college. That's just too much. It never seems to be his fault when he doesn't do well. To me, he is still a boy.
But i don't want to waste my time talking about him anymore because i am not interested in him. I sound very cold, don't i? I'm sorry. I guess thats because i can imagine all the things he says about me. This relationship doesn't work out and he is going to blame everything on me.
Alright, so let's chat about something else~! :) hehehehe.... Anna has her serious moments and her happy moments. What a split personality! I just wanted to explain to you. Anyway, whether you want to accept my opinion or not doesn't really matter because i don't have feelings for him anymore. It's over, and i am happy about that. I feel like i have been let out of the golden cage.
Life goes on, doesn't it, Robin? People come and people go and we just have to grow up and accept that. If we don't accept it, we can never go on in life. We will just waste our time looking at the back mirror while we drive. We cannot hold on to the past forever. As far as i am concerned, that book is finished, closed and gone. I am starting a whole new book now. No, I'm not sweeping everything under the carpet. I am simply letting go of the past. And i think letting go is the right thing to do. Don't you?
So what's up these days? Is everything alright? I like chatting with you, I feel like its a place where i can be myself and not have anyone to criticize me for being who i am. Thank you so much, Robin. You're a good friend.
* tRUST & OBey the LORD *
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