World Street Children News

Uganda: Kampala Woman MP Opens Home for Needy Children
New Vision (Kampala)

January 17, 2007
Posted to the web January 18, 2007

Rehema Aanyu
Kampala

KAMPALA Woman MP, Nabilah Ssempala, has opened up a food pantry and childcare centre to cater for needy children.

The food pantry was started in March 2006 and is funded through donations from well-wishers and friends.

With her husband Isaac Ssempala, Nabilah purchased an acre of land at Nakigalala in Wakiso district, where they intend to build a permanent home for the children.

Launching the centre at Nakivubo Settlement Primary School recently, Nabilah said: "This initiative was inspired by the growing need to address the issue of street children, which has become a national shame. As a leader, it is my duty to assist these street children."

Street children and families are a common sight on the Kampala streets.

Ranging from the ages of one month to over 12 years, ragged and malnourished, the children sit with their mothers on sidewalks, pavements and near crossroads waiting for passersby.

With 80% of the street children and families being Karimojong, Nabilah blames Karimojong Members of Parliament for being behind the influx.

"Such a massive exodus of people from Karamoja must be fuelled by opportunists who pay transport fares for the children to come to Kampala to beg," Nabilah asserts.

Karamoja MPs, however, refute the allegations.

"The insecurity, famine, drought and harsh life in Karamoja force people to flee to Kampala," says Simon Lokodo, the Member of Parliament Dodoth County, Kaabong district.

"We (Karimojong leaders) have nothing to do with it. These are our people. How can we exploit them in such a crude manner?" he asks.

He said they were working hand-in-hand with the Government and the donor community to solve the problem.

Lokodo applauded Nabilah for taking the initiative to help the needy children.

The centre, which currently cares for over 200 children, plans to shelter over 4,000 children.

"Our target is to assist over 4,000 disadvantaged children living in Kampala. They will receive medical care, rehabilitation and referral to other charity organisations," Nabilah revealed.

"Through our emergency client service programme, we offer food and clothing to the children and their families," she said.

With a team of volunteers and support staff who cater for the children, the project also provides counselling and education to the children.

Nabilah asserts that serving all people who need assistance is at the core of the initiative’s development.

"We also offer special support to families affected by HIV/AIDS. They are the most vulnerable of all," Nabilah said.

Nabilah calls upon Good Samaritans to lend a hand through donations.

"There is need for civil society, government, religious and the local community to intervene in this cause to give these children a better future," Nabilah said.

South Africa: Children of a Lesser God - Durban’s Legacy of Poverty
Fahamu (Oxford)

OPINION
January 17, 2007
Posted to the web January 18, 2007

Saranel Benjamin

Durban is known for its beautiful beaches and its sunny skies. Saranel Benjamin, however, argues that life in Durban in not all that rosy, especially for street children.

I’ve been walking the streets of Durban with my friend and co-researcher. We’ve been walking from the beachfront to the workshop looking for street children. We walk through alleyways with names I didn’t even know existed in a city I have lived in all my life. I see things that I have read about but never seen up close, in my life. I see things that I know a modern society like ours should not be having in its midst.

Our brief is specific. We have to find street children for our research. But they cannot be any street children - it has to be street children that survive by scavenging in refuse bins for food. I have seen tons of research done on all aspects of street children - from their survival strategies, HIV/Aids, the impact on the family system, to the psychological impact on children who live on the street. Many researchers have walked this path that we are walking. I am certain that they too felt their souls shattering as they talked to these children.

Every night I am haunted by the faces of the children I meet during the day. Their stories weigh heavy on my heart and when I close my eyes I see their hungry, pained, desperate faces. I want to hug them all, save them all. I am riddled with guilt with every spoonful of food I put into my mouth, for the roof I have over my head, and the warm bed I have every night. I panic when it starts to rain because I think of Thabo, Senzo and all the other children who are sleeping on pavements with no shelter over their heads, getting drenched to the bone - six children sharing one tattered blanket. I look at the time. It is about 5pm. I know that the children will be going out, like stealth-hunters, spreading through the shadows of the city, scavenging in bins for food.

But my sadness comes most from how, as the human race, we have failed our children. As a society, supposedly built on humanness, we have sacrificed our children. We look at the children on the street and we don’t give them a glance because we rationalize that they are not our own. We are the adults, the grown-ups, the custodians of the children of our society. We brought them into this world and gave them life. As the grown-ups we have a duty to care for them, all children, not just our own. Most of the children we spoke to were forced onto the streets because their parents had died and/or their families were so destitute that these children had to go out onto the street either to take care of themselves or to send money back home to their poverty-stricken families. When the economics and the politics of our country becomes so inhumane that our only answer to our children is to thrust them out of their homes to fend for themselves, we should know then that our time, as the humane race, is over. We have become savages amidst our country’s neglect to devise a back-up plan for this catastrophe.

Recently we met Thabo, a little boy of 12. He has been on the street for just two weeks. Both his parents died and his granny couldn’t afford to take care of him and his two sisters so she sent them out of the house. He doesn’t know where his two sisters are. They got separated on the streets. He looks like a fish out of water on that sunny yet grotty part of the Durban beachfront. He should be playing on the beach, frolicking in the water. Instead he sits outside a supermarket not knowing how to go about asking these grown-up strangers for food or money. His heart hasn’t hardened enough to allow him to make that decision to steal as yet. Nor has he been integrated into any of the other packs of street children where he would be taught the skills of surviving on the street. Instead, Thabo’s broken heart and hungry stomach forces him to stick his little, innocent hands into a garbage bin and scrummage inside it with the hope that some grown-up stranger has thrown away his or her lunch. His sad, tear-streaked face made me feel ashamed that all this time I didn’t know the extent of what lay at the foot of where I lived and that in all this time, I didn’t do anything - that I lived my life as if the world, South Africa, Durban was alright.

I know that when we come back in a few weeks, Thabo will be integrated into a pack of seasoned street children. There is a greater likelihood that he will be beaten up by some of the older boys. He will definitely be introduced to the ways in which he can ease the pinching hunger in his stomach and the splitting headache by sniffing glue and/or prostituting himself to the grown-up men in big cars with big money. He will be taught how to steal. He will inevitably spend a couple of months in a jail cell.

But there is always the hope that Thabo will find his way into a pack of street children who hold the dream of making something of their lives by living honestly. Some of the boys we spoke with hold a simple ambition of earning money for their food and shelter. They do this by washing or guarding cars they know they will never get to own, let alone drive in. Or they sell trinkets and snacks to tourists or passer-bys. In this group Thabo might be able to earn just enough to keep his little hands out of the rubbish bins, his little body safe from seedy men, and his innocent life out of prison.

But even these boys find themselves living on the fringes of a safe life. For as much as these children want to escape the reality of their shitty existence, there are those grown-ups, big people, adults, custodians of children like the police, for example, who are intent on erasing our modern city landscape of the eyesore that is street children. Some of the boys on the street have reported that at least twice a week, the "Black Jacks" (police) come around and confiscate the goods that they are selling by claiming that the street children are illegal traders and do not have permits to trade. For extra good measure, just to make sure that the kick to the hungry stomach is humiliating and lasts long enough to keep the kid on his knees, the police take away their blankets and their clothes. Some of the boys have resorted to wearing all their clothes at once so that they won’t be stolen by their custodians. Although one boy said that he regularly gets stripped down to his underpants and his clothes taken away by the "Black Jacks".

As we walk into one of the parks in the city centre, I see a boy sitting by himself under a tree. He has a defeated look on his face. He stares blankly into space. Whilst we are talking to the other boys in the park and they are showing us the papers that show that their goods have been impounded by the police, the boy gets up and joins us. He says that his stuff was taken away by the police and he can get it back if he pays the R100 fine and an additional R100 to release his goods. He holds his head like a boxer who just received a knock-out punch. My heart breaks again. For them, and for the endless cruelty that has become our society.

So here they are: the children of a lesser god, sitting in the baking heat contemplating the day’s hunt and how to get the maximum amount of food from the city’s rubbish bins to fill their hungry stomachs. They sit on drums, buckets, on the pavement that is covered in filth and grime. They sit there in the pure irony of their situation, a parody so cruel: they wear clothes that don’t belong to them that bear the brand names (Adidas and Levis T-shirts, Von Dutch belts, Nike takkies three times the size of their little feet, Polo jeans) of big multinational clothing companies that are the beneficiaries of the very system that has given us street children. They sleep in the enclave of a shop front of a building that has a mural of a happy child having fun on the beaches of Durban.

The street children have a hard night ahead of them because they have no blankets, except for Musa. He’s been on the street for 15 years, speaks fluent English and is wise enough to strike a deal with a nearby shop owner to store his blankets in the shop owner’s premises. He gives us a toothy grin as he tells us this. We admire his street smart ways as he desperately tries to pull his Levi jeans over his tattered Adidas track pants, in preparation for what the night might bring.

• Saranel Benjamin is an independent researcher from the Advocacy, Research and Training Consultancy.

• Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Street Children in South Africa
Short video about street children in South Africa and one project that is helping them.

centro de encontro mozambique paulinho likes to dance
Our Paulinho likes rap music and he likes to dance. Our project helps poor children in Maputo, Mozambique. We have a streetschool, a soccerschool, AIDS activists and a rapgroup. Info: Centro de Encontro, Caixa Postal 4489, Maputo, Mozambique.

DYOC Kids
10 year old streetkids in Chang Ombe, Dar es Salaam. They play football in the club Dar es Salaam Youth Olympic Center.

A study of street children in Yemen
By Abdul-Aziz Oudah
Jan 16, 2007, 17:07

About 5,000 children are forced to live on the streets in four Yemeni governorates, according to the results of the first stage of a new comprehensive survey of street children. This first stage began on December 4th and ended last week. It was carried out by the Supreme Council of Motherhood and Childhood, in cooperation with the Arab Council for Childhood and Development Support in the Yemeni governorates of Sana’a, Aden, Taiz, and Hodeida.

Dr. Fou’ad al-Salahi, a sociology professor at Sana’a University, the head of the team, said that this survey is the largest survey in Yemen of street children.  The implementation of the first stage carried was out in Yemen’s four main governorates. The second stage will start next week, and will be carried out in Hadramout, Ibb, Dhamar, and Hajja.  The survey initially focused on Sana’a, Aden, Taiz, and Hodeida because they are the most populous. They also draw many people from the countryside to their cities, so there is much internal migration, according to al-Salahi.

The survey aims to create a comprehensive picture of the situation of street children in Yemen. This will hopefully lead to amendments designed to protect these children and to determine the factors associated with street children and their families, and their economic, social, and cultural rights.  Al-Salahi said that the team was keen to identify the problems of street children by speaking directly to them, to find out their social status and ages. This information will help services to be put in place to help reduce the number of children on the streets.  The first stage was accomplished by a team composed of 20 researchers, four supervisors, and a team leader.

In a related subject Mohammed al-Ahwal, the Yemeni ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that the number of children arrested during the last year in Saudi reached 900.  Ali Saleh Abdullah, the Deputy Minister of Social Affairs and Labor, said that child trafficking across the border subsided recently as a result of the efforts between the two countries.  An agreement between Yemen and Saudi Arabia to cooperate in fighting against children trafficking is expected to be signed this week.

Abdullah said that a work program will be signed in 2007 with the Saudi Social Affairs Ministry and Labor Ministry.  He said that the program mainly addresses social security, handicapped people, and children in various fields, in addition to the development of private associations’ work in the two countries and coordination of their activities.  Saudi Arabia has opened shelters for trafficked children in Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah.
Copyright 2002 - 2006 Yemen Observer

AFGHANISTAN: Children work the streets to support families

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Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

Thousands of children work the streets of Kabul to sustain their families

KABUL, 16 January 2007 (IRIN) - Ahmad Wali, 9, is combing the rubbish dump for soda cans to sell as a way to support his 11-member family in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Thousands of children work the streets to help their households through the harsh winter.

“They [empty soda cans] are easily available everywhere and more profitable than other metals which we collect and then sell in the city,” Wali told IRIN, as he shivered with cold.

“The price of 1kg of these [aluminium] cans is equal to 7kg of other metals that we collect and sell. That is why many children are trying to find more soda cans and earn more money for their families,” said Wali, who is making up to US$3 a day.

“I have to work hard as my father lost his job and it has become very difficult for us to get by and pay the monthly rent for our house,” he explained.

There are no accurate figures on how many children work in Kabul but aid workers fear the number is rising. Some estimates put the number of youngsters working as labourers or beggars in Kabul at about 37,000 in 2004, the last year for which statistics are available.

“Unfortunately, the number of street children is increasing day by day in our country because of the widespread poverty and a lack of proper work opportunities for people,” Mohammad Yousef, director of ASCHIANA, a local NGO supporting working children and their families, said in Kabul.

Afghanistan is ranked 173rd out of 178 on the Human Development Index calculated by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which estimates that 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of $2 a day.

A survey released by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in May 2006 revealed that 60 percent of families surveyed stated that almost half their children were involved in some kind of labour.

A report by the UK-based charity Oxfam in November 2006 warned that seven million children, almost half the total in the country, were missing out on education. Oxfam said about six million were stunted due to malnutrition.

“Educating Afghanistan’s children is crucial in improving their lives and in the rebuilding and development of the country. But poverty, crippling fees and huge distances to the nearest schools prevent parents from sending their children to school,” Grace Ommer, head of Oxfam GB in Afghanistan, said.

In an effort to help working children, ASCHIANA has opened seven vocational centres in Kabul and three in different provinces where more than 7,000 street children are learning about carpentry, tailoring, computers, music and theatre.

Almost 15,000 street children have attended ASCHIANA classes since it started operating in Kabul in 1995, and hundreds have found jobs so far, Yousef explained.

Wali is just one of the children benefiting from the classes. “During the afternoon I study English, Maths and other subjects at ASCHIANA to learn something and find a good job in the future,” the boy said.

Abdul Karim Hamid, head of labour law at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, said it had established 16 vocational training centres in different provinces. About 12,000 street children and unemployed youths are being trained in various trades ranging from carpentry, tailoring, carpet weaving to English language and computers. The programmes, which began in 2003, last six months to one year.

Officials of the MLSA said they were planning to enroll 150,000 unemployed and impoverished youth in training centres by 2010.

“We are trying to establish more well-equipped vocational training centres across the country but our major problem is a lack of funds,” Hamid said.

Aid workers say more funds are needed to tackle the problem and the Oxfam report called on international donors to channel funds through the Afghan Ministry of Education and requested the international community invest $563 million to rebuild 7,800 schools across the country.

Canadian medics treat Afghan street kids with checkups and candies
 
Doug Schmidt, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, January 15, 2007

KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan — The curtain outside the makeshift clinic parts and a police officer gruffly ushers Ali Mohammad in to meet the doctor.

Ali is filthy in his layers of tattered clothes, but he sports a huge grin. This beats his usual daily grind, sifting through Kandahar’s garbage for anything of remote value.

"I have a headache. I’m cold and have cracks in my feet," the 12-year-old tells the doctor.

"I have a little problem in my chest," Ali later tells a reporter as he cheerily clutches a scrawled list and heads over to a nearby table to collect his medicines under the gaze of rifle-toting Canadian soldiers.

Popping a soothing medicated lemon drop into his mouth, Ali then goes to fetch his younger and even grubbier-looking brother for his checkup. Perowz, 5, has more health issues and is handed a small stack of boxes of medication, several with warning labels in English: "Keep out of the reach of children."

From the appearance of their bare, leathery, black feet, some of the kids gathered here to see medical professionals for the first time appear to have never owned footwear.

Meet the recyclers of Kandahar City, a rag-tag collection of orphaned, displaced, illiterate or otherwise neglected children who survive in the streets.

In a dirt-poor country, they are among the dirtiest and the poorest.

It’s winter and the temperatures can get bitterly cold but none of these kids wears socks or boots, and a few don’t even have sandals.

Ali works seven days a week, from dawn to dusk. He’s paid up to 30 afghanis, or just over 70 cents, per day. With that, he could buy six loaves of bread. Two people can live on 30 afghanis a day, but it would be a diet restricted to bread and chai, the local tea, and not much extra for sugar.

"Before this, I don’t know what they did," said Haji Faizul Haq Mushkani, a local entrepreneur who decided a year ago to do something for Kandahar’s roaming street kids. "These are poor people’s kids, some have parents — others, their fathers died or left."

Working with local businesses, Faizul Haq employs more than 120 city children to hit the streets and collect discarded plastic, tin and other items then sold to recyclers.

On this day, he’s stuffed almost two dozen children into a pickup truck and brought them to the downtown police/fire station where three doctors and a dentist hired by Canada’s Kandahar-based provincial reconstruction team will give them a checkup. The reconstruction team regularly hosts medical outreach clinics, but this one is special, targeting street kids, every one of whom, at least in this group, appears to suffer from one or more of a myriad of gastro-intestinal, respiratory and skin diseases.

"This is not by any means a cure for the problem here, but at least it gives them temporary relief for their ailments," said Dr. Mark Dacambra, medical officer at the reconstruction team’s home base at Camp Nathan Smith.

"And a certain percentage of things we do fix — for example, throat and ear infections."

This day’s clinic will cost Canadians about $3,200. Not included in that are the candies and small gifts handed out by the soldiers providing security, goodies raided from Christmas care packages from their families back home.

Ali and Perowz are luckier than most here. Living with other refugees and nomads in the outskirts of the sprawling city, they and their four siblings have both parents.

Yes, it’s sometimes cold in the streets, said Ali, "but it’s cold at home, too, because we live in tents."

Kids forced to work may be an abhorrent concept to most in the Western world, but in today’s Afghanistan it means survival.

"As much as we bemoan child labour, that doesn’t apply here — they either collect recyclables or starve," says Capt. Neil Stocker, a CIMIC (Civil Military Co-operation) officer with the PRT.

"If I didn’t give them work, they’d be stealing in the street or becoming beggars, bad people," said Faizul Haq.

At the end of the clinic, the kids jump back onto the pickup and the soldiers back into their armoured vehicles to return to their respective temporary homes.

‘Conduct ops against street kids regularly’
12 January, 2007

Kota Kinabalu: Wednesday’s major integrated operation to clean the city centre of street children, the mentally unsound, beggars, illegal street peddlers as well as car wash boys has received the thumbs-up. In welcoming the crackdown, they hoped the local authority and government agencies would carry out such exercises more often and, if possible, extend it to the city outskirts where such problems are much more serious than in the city centre. Sembulan Neighbourhood Watch Security, Social and Anti-Narcotics Chairman, Sirad Haji Tugimin, also commended those involved in the exercise. "But if they don’t it regularly, things will come back to the exact situation before. So it is best if we can have it done more regularly for the safety and benefit of all including tourists," he said. The operation led by City Hall’s Enforcement Director Mukti Muchlis, from noon till 10pm, saw more than 100 people being rounded up for further action. The exercise, concentrated on the Segama, Sinsuran, Kampung Air and Kota Kinabalu Proper (Gaya Street) areas, involved more than a hundred officers and personnel from City Hall’s Enforcement Department, Police, Rela, Immigration Department, Customs Department, Federal Special Task Force, Hospital Mesra Bukit Padang, Resettlement Unit of the Chief Minister’s Department and the Welfare Services Department. The exercise was also meant to show that the local authority and government agencies are concerned and want to ensure the city is safe and free of such inhabitants, particularly during this Visit Malaysia Year. Hoping the authorities would also include foreigners involved in the pirate public transportation sector as their future targets, Sirad said this is because the problem is worsening and may give a bad image to the local transportation services. He also urged City Hall to ensure that cleanliness at city parks and public toilets is maintained all the time, besides lighting up dark alleys.

"We also hope there will be more deployment of tourist policemen on the city streets so that the tourists as well as public will feel safe when having a stroll especially at night," said Sirad.

Rwanda: Help Widows As You Discourage Begging

The New Times (Kigali)
January 12, 2007
Immaculate Chaka
Kigali

Poverty is the prime factor causing many Rwandans to live a devastating life. The most affected include the orphans and widows who as the only alternative have stormed the streets of different towns.

Most of the widows in Rwanda live a desperate life. Poverty is not only in terms of money but also basic needs like housing, food, education and clothing’s extra.
Western Union

It is due to poverty that most widows send their children to beg on streets or leave their families and go to stay on the streets as street children.

Street children are not the only people found on the streets begging, but there are a number of types people found in the city begging. Among these are street children who co-habit in the streets and street children who sent by their parents or guardians to beg due to the situation at home.

Street children are not the only people commonly seen begging on the streets, poverty has caused also mature people to leave their families, homes and go on the streets to beg.

One can think "But these beggars in the streets are normal, why they can’t work". I used to think the same way but after speaking to some of the old ladies from Rubungo in Gasabo district, who were moving from one house to the other begging for food, clothing extra. I discovered that at least they had a reason but instead of giving them free things, they should be helped get out of the unfavorable conditions which makes them beg.

While narrating their story to this reporter Anastasia Mukandahiro of 70 and Rose Mukakimenyi of 80 said "We are not pleased to beg at our age, poverty has forced us beg when it is not necessary. We have spent four years co-hosting in neighbors, we do not have food to eat, clothes to wear, money to take our grand sons and daughters in schools nor have houses to build on our own shelters said the old ladies.

I live a miserable life because I do not have a solution to my problems, begging helps solve some of my needs like food and clothes that good Samaritans offer me said Rose Mukakimenyi.

She further said though begging can solve partly her problems, it can not give education to her grand children and beddings.

Mukandahiro Anastasia told The New times that some time back she was depending to the pottery, were she could get some little money to feed the family but since the buying of the swamps were they used to collect clay from, buying soap and other basic needs became a great deal to handle.The issue of beggars does not call for the government only, it’s every one’s responsibility to help, not all beggars are after free things, among them are capable to do you services if given so long as there is a wage at the end.