Notes from trip report

Tehran-Orumiyeh, 4-7/5/2009

Field visit to Rural Child Care Centres and Nutritional Care Centres in villages around the towns of Shahindezh and Takab to familiarize myself with UNICEF Iran projects, speak to stakeholders and take photographs; support Goodwill Ambassador to give her direct experience with UNICEF Iran’s field work.

We visited four Rural Child Care Centres and one Nutritional Care
Centre, together with several officials from State Welfare Organisation
and Ministry of Health who introduced UNICEF-related activities in the
province to our delegation. We introduced UNICEF Iran’s Goodwill
Ambassador to stakeholders and the children beneficiaries in the Centres visited.

Personal notes:

The villages we visited are located around Lake Orumiyeh, one of the world’s largest landlocked salt lakes. However, Lake Orumiyeh is shrinking, which has devastating consequences for the wildlife and the people living in the area. We visited the area with UNICEF Iran’s Goodwill Ambassador, actress Mahtab Keramati. The children in the kindergartens we saw, were dressed up to the nines, in their best holiday regalia. Many were quite nervous about our visit, but after a few hours with them, they soon became used to our presence.

We interviewed the staff, Mahtab played with them, and I took their portraits. Twelve years later, they must be young adults now and perhaps are able to see their images here. We tried to send them prints of their portraits but the area is far off the beaten track and UNICEF could not mount a second visit to the area, since already the first was fraught with considerable administrative hurdles. It was a memorable trip, not only because of the people we met but also because of the amazing landscape of the region, which I will show in a different series.

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