Explore the locations and context of the photos displayed throughout our museum below. All photos are copyright, Nancy Richards Farese.
Learn more about this special installation in honor of our 25th anniversary here.
Flag Day beach celebrations continue on the beach near Léogâne, Haiti, a town that lost 70% of its buildings in the 2010 earthquake that killed over 200,000 people in the country.
Playing cricket with a ‘ball and bat,’ which in this case is a stick and a Coke can.
This girl told me her story: “I am seven years old. I have been here for almost four months. I got here by walking. I don’t remember the journey. I played other games and read in school in Myanmar. I really like jumping rope. I’m not interested in playing with boys, only with girls. I feel very bad here. When I left Myanmar, I was fine. But this is a new place, an unknown place. No friends are here, so this is not a good place for me. I go to school here. I have one sister and two brothers. Only my father and mother and one brother came here with me. I don’t know what happened to the other brother. My favorite color is red.”
When a natural disaster strikes, it is essential to provide the kids with a sense of safety and normalcy while the parents work to reestablish their lives. Many homes and schools in Haiti were significantly damaged or destroyed during the 2017 hurricane, so CARE International launched an emergency response to create art and activity centers with daily structured activities for kids while also helping to rebuild schools to get kids back in the classroom.
Kids play a traditional game called La Campanita, an ancient version of a Mayan tug-of-war game played by both boys and girls. CARE International works in the region to promote equal access to quality education for all children. The parents meet regularly to discuss the value of going to school, especially during harvest season when kids are needed at home to work the family farm.
The so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan” was a group of over 20,000 boys of the Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War, which killed over 2 million people. The boys embarked on treacherous journeys to refugee camps in Kenya, where thousands were sheltered for several years. Some of the Lost Boys were offered new lives through official resettlement in the US, Canada, or Europe, and some remain in the refugee camps to this day; the United Nations will not force anyone to return to a place that they feel is unsafe.
This girl is 13 years old and a Syrian refugee at the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. She had to leave her home when the bombing began, fleeing with her parents and seven siblings, six of which are girls. Remarkably, her mother, seated in the back in a black burka, allows all seven girls to participate in Taekwondo which is offered to engage the kids at the camp.
In 2018, 800,000 Rohingya families fled violence in Myanmar to settle in refugee camps in Bangladesh; more than half of the refugees were children under 18. In this photograph, the kids have made a toy from a plastic water jug that they spin, like a frisbee.
This community center in Irbid, Jordan, is just over the border from the war in Syria. These play areas aim to establish a ‘safe space’ for children to begin to socialize and heal. Many families fled bombing and violence, and the kids are eager to turn to play to start to feel normal again.
Cox Bazaar Refugee Camp sprang into existence in four weeks to support the one million Rohingya who fled violence in Myanmar. When I photographed there in 2018 on behalf of CARE International, it housed more than 100,000 people.
Refugee boys from Mali playing ‘Cercle’ at Goudoubo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso
This refugee family arrived in America from The Democratic Republic of the Congo as this little girl’s mother fled political violence and sexual assault. In her words: “When I first arrived in America, and I saw that they had protected places for children to play (playgrounds), I said to myself, ‘What a country is this!” “One day, I told my daughter,” You will be a doctor,” and she said, ‘You can not choose for me - I will choose for myself!’ I was surprised. She has an opinion. In America, they teach kids to express themselves and to know why they are doing something. It’s good, but as her mother, it is challenging...In Africa, she would not know this." Joy is a Congolese refugee now living in Massachusetts. Boston-based Refugepoint supported her transit to the US with her daughter.
A common custom in the Rohingya community for girls is to wear makeup and costume beads. Child marriage is very common; most girls marry between 12 and 16. It is not uncommon to meet an 18-year-old with two or three children.
Grand’Anse is in the Jérémie District of Haiti, where families struggle to recover from the devastating Hurricane Matthew of 2017, which destroyed homes, and washed out bridges, roads, and gardens. With schools either destroyed or taken over as shelters, CARE International offered structure and alternative education to keep kids engaged in normal structured activities as their parents worked to rebuild their lives. This boy plays ‘Cercle,’ a popular game made simply with a plastic jug top and a coat hanger.
In the early days of television, federal communications laws prohibited targeting children as consumers in the US, based on the understanding that young children can not distinguish between educational programming and commercial advertisement. In the 1980s, these restrictions were dropped, and TV programming became less focused on education and more overtly directed at selling toys to kids. By 1987, nine of the top ten children’s shows were based on marketable toys.
In 2010 after the Haitian earthquake that killed over 200,000 people, many Americans generously participated in Christmas toy drives for the children of Haiti. In this community, these toys remain some of the most valuable possessions for many families, so unfortunately, the children are generally not allowed to play with them. Still in their boxes, these toys were pulled carefully from the rafters of houses, taken out only for the photo, then quickly put away.
This Rohingya boy has made a pull toy from an old water jug and added bottle tops for wheels.
This Tuareg boy from Mali is using palm nuts as a nutritious snack and a toy- to juggle! He and his friends have competitions to see who can juggle the most and the fastest. Palm nuts are ubiquitous in the desert and a favorite snack of children.
This girl is 8 years old, making mud pies. She is a Rohingya refugee who fled with her family to Bangladesh. She simply says, “They burned my house down.”
Jérémie, Haiti is one of the poorest regions in an impoverished nation. These girls live in a mountain village that has, in the last 15 years, been hit by two significant earthquakes and a giant hurricane that wiped away the planting and killed the livestock on which their family depends. Their mother is a fighter, a local village leader working with CARE International to support better healthcare and educational access for these remote villagers.
Be the first to know about upcoming events, programs, and ways we’re playing!
The Iowa Children’s Museum. © 2024 · All Rights Reserved | Web Design by Running Robots
The Iowa Children’s Museum will be closed Monday, August 26th, through Friday, August 30th, for routine cleaning and maintenance. Thank you for your patience while we work to make our exhibits even better for your next visit!
