Building Lives - More Information

From ‘Notes to Teachers’

‘Building Lives’ is an introduction to the work of aid agencies, with a special focus on
faith-based agencies. Working with the example of a UK based agency – Islamic Relief– it covers the general areas of humanitarian and development aid. It also explores the
role faith has to play in inspiring faith-based agencies in their work.

Islamic Relief
Islamic Relief is a humanitarian aid agency, founded in the UK, in 1984, by Dr Hany El Banna OBE. It’s driven by the desire to provide the world’s poorest people with support and skills for long-term self-sufficiency. To this end, its projects span Africa, Asia, Europe, the Russian Federation and the Middle East.

As a member of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), Islamic Relief responds to man-made and natural disasters through its field offices in 23 countries. At the heart of Islamic Relief is its development work: educating orphans, empowering women to use their skills, facilitating jobs for men, installing clean water systems for communities and so forth. Essentially, like other agencies in the aid sector, Islamic Relief aspires to restore hope and dignity to fellow human beings.

‘Building Lives’
The booklet, Building Lives, uses the natural disaster of the Indian Ocean tsunami to illustrate how an aid agency rebuilds people’s lives for long-term sustainability. In each double page, we explore a different theme, including what an aid agency is (focusing on the role of faith-based agencies) and the various sectors of work: emergency and relief, water and sanitation, health, house construction, income generation, education, fundraising and advocacy.

We then go onto examine what the international community is doing to reduce poverty, through the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) programme – a United Nations initiative. Finally, we explore the root causes of poverty and what options are left open for us to act.

At the end of each section, is a classroom-based activity. This can be used for individual, paired or group settings. The activities are cross-curricular, and they are designed to allow opportunity for speaking and listening skills through discussion and debate. The pictures throughout the booklet can be used, effectively, for much more discussion on a range of topics.

The accompanying worksheets follow the same topics as the booklet. However, they aren’t based on the specific contents of every page. Instead, they extend the topic by
looking at it from another perspective. The worksheets are relevant to the following
curriculum areas at Upper Key Stage 2: geography, citizenship and PSHE, literacy,
numeracy and science.