WFP kids "cannot pinpoint home on map"

Uganda kids at a WFP feeding programme

ROME -- Families of WFP staffers "crack at the seams" and their children "can grow up alienated, rootless ... with heavy emotional 'baggage,' a study by the agency finds.

On the other hand the "nomadic children" of employees at the Rome-base U.N. World Food Programme, also "enjoy a rich tapestry of experience lived a world apart from the country that issued their passports," according to a lengthy article in WFP's in house staff magasine Pipeline. "They're polyglots, expert packers, hard-wired at a tender age to climb on board, put on their airline headsets and jet off to a new country and life."

The article entitled "Next generation: WFP Kids who dollow the humanitarian path," adds that "the drawbacks of nomadic life are well defined: a good number of families crack at the seams (studies suggest the divorce rate is high relative to that in less mobile careers); kids can grow up alienated, rootless, confused with heavy emotional 'baggage.'"

"Even the strongest suffer from loneliness and the pain of seperation from friends and family," according to the Pipeline feature written by Jennifer Parmalee.

Yet it is also true that "they adapt quickly -- or learn how -- and have friends scattered about the planet. They carry expanded world views with their many passport stamps, but rarely proclaim a strong national identity. They're citizens of the world, at home anywhere but often -- the paradox -- cannot pinpoint 'home' on the map."

 

WFP Ambassador Christina Aguilera