World Street Children News :: Africa Streetkid News

Saving the street kids of Kigali
A Canadian program aims to make life a little easier for street youths in Rwanda
Elaine O’Connor, The Province
Published: Sunday, June 01, 2008

Canadian aid worker Jennifer Kamari is pushing her toddler in a stroller in Rwanda’s capital, talking about the challenges of helping the street kids of Kigali, when she’s suddenly approached by two of them.

A ragged girl and boy bleating for money: "Faranga, faranga!"

They look just a few years older than Kamari’s daughter, Isabella. But Kamari doesn’t offer money. Instead, the 37-year-old gives them what she believes is real help: directions to International Teams Canada Vivante Street Kids Association.

She tells them to look for "Jesus Christ" to get there. Those are the blue-painted words on the roof of Vivante Church that serve as a billboard for the city’s thousands of street youth. In this hilly city with so many vantage points, it’s the best way for barely literate children to find safety.

—

Rwanda has the highest proportion of orphans and child-headed households in the world, according to a 2005 UNICEF report. Many children lost their parents in the genocide; now AIDS is creating more orphans.

In 2006, Rwanda’s minister of gender and families estimated 1.2 million were orphaned and vulnerable. The majority receive aid from charities or were adopted. But a 2002 UNICEF study estimated 7,000 street children lived in Rwanda, 3,000 in the capital alone. Their lives are bleak. In 2004, UNICEF estimated 2,140 child prostitutes were working in Rwanda’s cities. A 2003 UN report estimated 31 per cent of children aged five to 14 were engaged in child labour.

Human Rights Watch has documented mass arrests of street kids, but the government is starting to change its tactics. It adopted a National Policy for Orphans in 2003, set limits on child labour and founded a few vocational schools and safe houses.

But there are still gaping holes for people like Kamari to fill.

She and her Rwandan husband, Serge, began ministering to street kids (mayibobo in Kinyarwanda) in 2004. They met on Kamari’s trip to Rwanda to set up a program for ITC. She’d been working in Elmira, Ont., directing missions in 40 countries.

Serge, 32, grew up in the Congo in a Rwandan Tutsi family, the second of eight children. At 17 he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front to fight the genocidal militias and was only demobilized in 2005 after finishing university. He was volunteering with Vivante in Kigali when Jennifer came to visit. They married in 2006.

Vivante started by feeding Sunday dinner to youths loitering around the church. Under the Kamaris, the program grew to dinner for 250 street youth aged six to 25, 20 of them girls. They now do twice-weekly dinners and educate, clothe, house and find identity cards and medical care for the kids.

In 2006, they began intensive work with a group of 10 youths, renting a home, teaching remedial classes, paying for vocational school and helping them find work as carpenters and welders.

"They’re unhappy with their lives, but they feel they have no way to change it," Jennifer says. "Each of them has worth. They have talents, they have skills. But to get them thinking that takes a long time. To see the lightbulbs go off is amazing. When they have self-worth, they can make good choices."

En route to Vivante, Serge drives by youths with rags and jerry cans of water who wash down cars and scooters for a few Rwandan francs. They sniff gas and are regularly caught by police, taken to an old factory in Gikondo (used to hold vagrants and prostitutes) and beaten. In 2006, a Human Rights Watch report found one-third of the 600 prisoners here were children. At least one has died in custody.

Some of the youths who have survived the prison sit on a bench outside Vivante’s kitchen and talk about what brought them there.

Emmanuel Bizimana, 25, was born in Butare and lost his entire family, save two uncles, in the genocide. The uncles put him out at 11 years of age. He slept in the bush and worked as a porter. He used drugs, was arrested, beaten and imprisoned four times.

"It is a very difficult life. You are just scared. You don’t know where to get food. The police come and take you to prison or just beat you."

Two years ago, he came to Vivante for a meal. They taught him to read and write. Now he’s living in a house and graduated from Centre des Formations des Gens trades school. He plans to be a welder.

"It is like a miracle to me," he says.

"I feel a responsibility to them to do what I can to bring hope to their life,"Jennifer says. "It’s our job to give them dreams."

—

On a precipice above the church in a warren of shacks lives one of the Kamaris’ own dreams — an orphan called Nshutiraguma, 15.

He comes to find them in a foster mother’s home one afternoon. He’s run from his Grade 3 class in search of a pen: The only one he owns has run dry. Nshuti arrived at Vivante in January 2007, not knowing his last name or remembering if he’d ever had a family. He began asking for school fees. He was one of the dirtiest kids Jennifer had ever seen.

"He had absolutely no schooling. He had no idea how to even hold a pen," she recalls.

But he passed Grade 1 exams while living on the street. Impressed, they found him a foster home. Last year, he graduated Grade 2, third of 75 kids.

Jennifer thinks he’ll be the first of the street kids to go to university.

"He dreams of being a pilot one day, which is the biggest dream we have ever heard. Somehow we have to be here to see him through."

eoconnor@png.canwest.com

How to help

To learn more about International Team Canada’s work or to get involved, visit www.iteams.ca.

A brief, brutal existence

    May 29 2008 at 01:53PM

By Vivian Attwood

Street children’s activist Tom Hewitt has compiled a terrible list of names. Whenever he looks at it he is overcome by memories of special young women - most still girls - whose lives ended prematurely on the streets of Durban.

He knew each girl well, the circumstances that had brought her to the city, her idiosyncrasies, strengths and fears.

Remembering Sarafina, Yoniswa, Nelly, Samke and many others strengthens his commitment to reintegrating Durban’s street children into caring communities.

Although street life is brutal for all those forced to endure it, girls are the most vulnerable, said Hewitt.

He questioned whether the word "vulnerable" is far-reaching enough to encompass their condition.

"To be vulnerable means to be open to emotional or physical danger, or to be exposed to an attack or possible damage.

"What terms are relevant to the street child experience if this ‘possibility’ is realised and realised often, even perpetually? Street children in Durban, particularly the girls, often live in a state of affliction rather than vulnerability."

Driving through a residential area of Durban recently, Hewitt noticed three street girls with whom he has a longstanding friendship through the Umthombo Foundation.

The children ran up to his car excitedly, and he queried why they were so far from their normal turf.

"We are running from Isaac*. He is raping us. We are afraid," said one of the girls. Isaac is a man in his 20s who has just been released from prison.

When he is drunk he terrorises the street children, beating up the boys and raping the girls.

"When girls who have been living on Durban’s streets, particularly in the Point area, are tested to determine their HIV status, the results are seldom negative," Hewitt said.

"They live in one of the highest possible risk categories for contracting the disease. When you examine their reality it is not hard to see why."

Hearing stories detailing the suffering of girls on our streets, it is difficult to comprehend that they are vilified by mainstream society when they are so helpless to change their fate.

When we cruise past these children windows wound up "just in case" we might more charitably be thinking "there but for the grace of God go I".

Scorn

Accompanying Bulelwa, Hewitt’s wife, on one of her regular visits to a group of street girls near Addington Hospital, I expect them to be as scruffy as the boys, and equally mock-brazen, in an attempt to deflect the scorn they receive from most passers-by. I am wrong on both counts.

Two teenage girls in pretty but threadbare dresses - too thin for the chill wind lancing down the street - lean together, heads bowed.

When they speak of their lives, they glance up only briefly, clearly ashamed of experiences they could not have avoided.

A third, in shorts and a cutaway shirt, clasps and unclasps her boyfriend’s hand as she describes how her baby, born prematurely at Addington Hospital, was taken into foster care.

She is keen to return to her mother’s home in the Eastern Cape, but is determined she won’t leave the streets without her child.

"The foster mother they took my baby to has changed her birth name. That makes me so sad," Phumla* said.

"When I take her little presents, the woman throws them away. Sometimes she chases me away, too. I am afraid she is trying to keep my child for herself."

Umthombo is currently working with social services to make sure Phumla will return to a stable environment, and that her baby will be taken care of.

She has promised to go into rehab to tackle her drinking problem before she starts her new life.

"Zodwa* fled to the streets of Durban because her mother sold her to a stranger for sex. She was nine years old. Two years later, she tested positive for HIV.

"Over the years she has learned to survive through prostitution and the support of fellow group members," Hewitt explained of another street girl.

"She learned to sniff glue very early on to smother fear and physical pain. She lives on a corner near the harbour with the members of her group. Truck drivers stop at night and beckon her and her friends to their vehicles.

"For Zodwa, ‘work’ involves performing sexual acts on truck drivers and local men, letting them penetrate her fragile body. If you ask her about this ‘work’ she is ashamed. She sees herself as the dirty one.

"Sometimes she gets really sick. She rolls herself into a ball under a pile of old clothes and cardboard on the street corner, shutting the world out for days on end. She gets thin. Sleep is an escape. She is bright and informed. She knows exactly what happens when you have full-blown Aids. She waits, just her and her glue bottle."

In the first part of our series on street children, printed on Tuesday last week, Bulelwa spoke movingly about growing up on a waste dump in East London.

She managed to scrounge enough food to survive. Some of her friends were less lucky.

Abusers

"I was misquoted in the media some time ago, and it really exasperated me. I had been speaking to a reporter about my experience as a young girl growing up on the streets, and I’d mentioned the tragedy that reduces some girls in that position to allow abusers access to their bodies in order to keep alive.

"When the report was published, the headline screamed: ‘Former street child prostitute speaks out’.

"It wasn’t that I minded being labeled a former prostitute erroneously. It was the fact he was demonising a certain sector of street children without any idea of what they endure to reduce them to that position, which really infuriated me." In his zeal to secure a scoop for his newspaper, the reporter was buying into the prevailing stereotype that all girls on the street turn to prostitution.

It is true that the majority are sexually exploited in some way, but the label "prostitute" is an unfair one.

Hewitt says: "When a girl arrives on the street it is not long before she attracts interest. Usually it is a boy or young person living on the streets who sees the opportunity for a girlfriend.

"This can mean rape, coerced sex or even fully consensual sex. Often the boy is not sinister but simply acting on normal teenage impulses, albeit in a very abnormal and anarchic environment. This can result in sexual activity almost immediately.

"At other times when a girl arrives on the streets she falls victim to older youths and other men. She is hungry, disorientated and desperate and will do literally anything to survive or feel ‘protected’.

"For many, the first night on the streets is a new chapter in the rape experience of their lives. There is always someone there, ready to prey on new arrivals."

# * Names have been changed

          o This article was originally published on page 10 of Daily News on May 29, 2008

Botswana: BCC Caters for Street Children
Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)

29 May 2008
Posted to the web 29 May 2008

Tumelo Setshogo

The number of street children in Gaborone has compelled the Botswana Council of Churches (BCC) to propose programmes to help them become part of the society.

The street children, according to BCC general secretary, David Modiega, are dropouts from primary up to senior secondary schools.

He said one of the reasons why these children are giving of why they have left school are, difficulties in understanding some subjects especially mathematics while others just left without any problems.

The organisation developed street vocational programmes such as re-education where they are taught construction, carpentry, social studies, computers, English and mathematics. lessons are done at Tsholofelong Project situated at Old Naledi.

Modiega told Mmegi that they have at least 56 children who are going through these programmes.

There are eight girls and 48 boys from Old Naledi.

He said the programme is aimed at encouraging them to go back to school to continue where they left off. Apart from the re-education component, Modiega said they rehabilitate students from drugs and re-integrate them into the society and "their parents".

"We are also imparting fund raising skills to them where we encourage them to save by helping them to open accounts at post offices," noted Modiega, adding BCC users Marimba instruments to raise funds.

However, the BCC spokesperson revealed that not all children are willing to go back to school as some fear stigma from their colleagues. "Stigma attached to them is that they are called ‘bo bashi’ and things like they are the BCC children," said Modiega.

To avoid this stigma, he told Mmegi that students should instead go to schools where they are not known and "they excel".

Meanwhile, Modiega said they are not indoctrinating the street children into any religion, but they are just doing their social responsibility programme as the churches. He also said it is difficult to convenience them (street children) about their programmes as they are used to the life of the street. "We have to first develop trust with them and propose to them nicely," he noted.

Modiega revealed that they have young people within their staff members who are helping in the recruitment exercise. He said as young people they have what it takes to talk to the street children and develop some form of friendship with them.

"We have to have a lot of patience as sometimes they run away when approached," said Modiega.

BCC also is developing their plot in Tsolamosese where they will build a hall and two classrooms for carpentry for girls. "Livestock and horticulture are some of the projects we will include at this plot," note Modiega.

The funds they are using for their Tsholofelong project are from Botswana National Youth Council (BNYC), Department of Culture and Youth (DCY) and rentals they get from Kopano building.

In other issues, Modiega told Monitor that before they parted ways with a Dutch NGO, ICCO, a few years ago, they managed to build approximately 50 two-roomed houses for families in Old Naledi.

He said their agreement with ICCO fell apart when Botswana was declared a middle income country "but we are looking at reviving the programme. We have identified OIKCREDIT Programme International for assistance".

OIKCREDIT is an international cooperation of churches which funds projects like "the one we used to build houses for the needy people. If funds could come through, we will want them to revolve so that more people can benefit".

Fuelled by the desire to make a difference

    May 23 2008 at 03:27PM

By Vivian Attwood

Val Mellis, the Senior Public Prosecutor at the Point magistrate’s court, has pretty much seen it all.

In a career encompassing many years’ involvement with child welfare and, more recently, taking a particular interest in the rights of street children in the Point area, she has been exposed to the underbelly of a society that still places a low premium on the safety and wellbeing of its
youth.

By rights, she should be hardened to much of what she encounters. Not so.
‘The rights of the child shall be paramount’

Although colleagues wonder how she can shoehorn everything she does into her working day, be a mother to two young daughters and still be on call 24/7 for people in crisis, she is fuelled by the desire to make a difference in her jurisdiction. The issue of street children is a passion.

"It’s pretty much an all-encompassing job," she concedes.

"I took my present position in 2007, because I like the idea of a fresh challenge."

The Public Prosecutor was challenged immediately - to attempt to keep her fury under control when, on May 25 that year, the provincial department of welfare blew the budget it had been allocated to assist the homeless, on a massive street party.

"To me, that was nothing short of criminal," she said.
‘It’s absolutely crucial that a first-phase shelter is established’

"I hate those so-called event days. Instead of lavishing money on something with no long-term benefit, we need to put continuous programmes in place for the homeless, particularly the street children.

"Some provinces - the Western Cape being a case in point - have legislation on street kids, and a functional, well-regulated system. It is up to the provincial department of welfare to draft similar legislation for KwaZulu-Natal and submit it to parliament."

Mellis is adamant that government stakeholders have to be held accountable for the fate of the street children.

"Section 28 of the Child Care Act states: ‘The rights of the child shall be paramount’," she said.

"We are committed to putting their interests first."

Commenting on the controversy that has flared each time Metro Police officers rounded up street children to remove them from the gaze of those attending events to promote the city, Mellis said: "The round-up approach simply doesn’t work. We need a co-ordinated effort and a task team where every member knows the mandates of the others. At the moment it’s hopelessly disparate."

The prosecutor said that while the Metro Police and the street kids don’t see eye to eye, the Point SAPS take a more sympathetic approach to issues concerning street children.

"I can guarantee you that since February last year the Point SAPS have not conducted a single round-up of street children. They are concentrating on building bonds with the kids to avoid problems."

In 2007 Mellis’s department ran a project targeting homeless adult men. They were taken off the streets, put up at hotels on Marine Parade, and given jobs with the Department of Parks and Recreation for three weeks.

A proviso was that they did not abuse substances during that period.

"The project produced encouraging results, but the most problematic participants were those who had grown up on the streets," she said.

"They were all over 18, but lacked birth certificates and ID documents. In many cases there were no families to contact for details of their date and place of birth. They were battling with addictions.

"One young man struck me in particular. He was a lovable rogue. We were grooming him with the hope of getting him off the streets, but then he blew it by committing a crime, and ended up in prison. I was agonising about why he’d thrown away his chances, when another member of the team explained that he’d not been able to kick his glue-sniffing habit."

Mellis decried the public tendency to dehumanise children living on the streets. Sadly, she said, the children can all too easily internalise the belief that they are subhuman.

"It is scary to contemplate, but if you don’t have an ID book, you literally don’t exist. You are a nothing in society, and therefore you have no self-worth. Why not turn to crime? The guy who doesn’t in those circumstances is a pretty remarkable individual."

The loss of family to HIV and Aids, poverty and abuse are some of the reasons children end up on city streets. Mellis related a recent incident that brought her to tears.

"It was pouring with rain and I found a small boy huddled in a doorway. His face wasn’t familiar, so I stopped to question him.

"He said he was 13 years old and came from Umlazi. Both his parents had died, followed by the aunt who was caring for him. He had no one left in the world."

Mellis identified two critical areas that need to be addressed to ensure that street children do not fall through the cracks.

"It’s absolutely crucial that a first-phase shelter is established. Not at the Point, though, because there is too much temptation and the children will backslide. The second pressing need is to co-ordinate efforts to help the street kids. I want to convene a meeting with all the stakeholders so that they can explain their mandates and begin pooling efforts."

She praised the work done by Umthombo and I-Care in particular: "They are doing an excellent job and I support them in their efforts. They are working within the legal system and following the processes so that the kids are assigned a social worker and are properly assessed. The city has tended to have a poor reputation in that regard."

Apart from the other forms of degradation street children are subjected to, Mellis is greatly concerned by the prevalence of sexual assault on both male and female children on the streets.

"Sometimes they endure the exploitation because of a financial incentive, but that is by no means always the case," she said.

"Cars stop at night and lure the children in. Law enforcement is not keeping track of these sex offenders, although Umthombo is attempting to compile a database on the issue."

Sadly, even when sex offenders who prey on children are identified and arrested, it does not follow that they receive jail terms, said Mellis.

"In every case where we have tried to prosecute these offenders, the cases collapse because the kids are too terrified to testify, and run away," she said.

"My job does get very intense, and the after-hours demands are tough, but you have to be available to help, because you might be the only chance some child has."

          o This article was originally published on page 10 of Daily News on May 23, 2008

Putting street kids’ needs first

    May 22 2008 at 07:02PM

By Vivien Attwood

Tom Hewitt was raised in Britain, where he enjoyed all the benefits of a First World economy and went on to obtain a degree at the University of San Francisco in California. However, when he began to work in Africa, he quickly discovered that his calling lay with those who had grown up with no benefits at all; the most marginalised sector of our community, the street children.

"They are not at risk, or vulnerable. It has gone beyond that," he wrote in a recent article on Umthombo’s website.

"I think about these words ‘vulnerable’ and ‘at risk’. How sanitised they sound. Why are we afraid to use more suitable words and phrases like ‘brutalised’, ‘crushed’, ‘manipulated’, ‘expendable’, ‘afflicted’ or ‘oppressed’?

"For the sake of the children, and our own humanity, let’s join together to bring about a revolution in the way street children are perceived and treated."

When Tom and his wife, Bulelwa, were searching for a name that would encapsulate their organisation’s aims, they knew they had hit pay dirt when they found "Umthombo", the name of a tree that grows in desert areas. It is a symbol of hope; a symbol of life sustained despite the harshest of conditions. The group offers support and friendship to street children.

As well as running outreach and aftercare programmes, Umthombo is partnered, in the running of a drop-in centre, with I-care who are contracted by the municipality for this purpose.

Employing the services of 18 former street children on their staff (Bulelwa herself lived on the streets as a child), they have complete understanding of the children’s position; the reasons why they ended up on the streets; the painful stigmatisation they endure; the risks they are exposed to and their longing to be reabsorbed into a more caring community.

Since Umthombo’s inception, the organisation has helped hundreds of children to leave the streets and find safe homes.

Tragedy

"Despite the tragedy unfolding on our streets, you can’t become hardened," said Hewitt. "You do see a lot of hope, and you have to hold on to that. We are mindful of the negatives, but committed to the positives.

"First off, you have to accept that you won’t get all the children off the street, and concede that their rehabilitation is a process, not something that can be effected overnight.

"Poverty is the underlying reason why kids live on the streets, compounded by the issue of HIV/Aids. However, we are not seeing the ’sea’ of orphans that was predicted.

"There is a small but steady increase in numbers. Currently, there are in the region of 1 000 street children in Durban, 400 of whom live at the Point. Naturally, we want to reduce their numbers, but it isn’t about statistics. Every one of these children is important."

Umthombo is part of the KwaZulu-Natal Alliance for Street Children. Other affiliates to this umbrella body are I-Care, Youth for Christ, Streetwise and Zamani.

"We are all fully registered Section 21 non-profit organisations that believe in building partnerships and devising and implementing city-wide strategies," explains Hewitt.

"Durban does not have a proud history with street children. Over the years there have been a number of articles in the press highlighting issues such as abuse, maladministration and wasted resources. Street children are constantly dehumanised in the media, yet a negligible amount of crime is attributable to them. Criticising is all very well, but we need to find city-wide solutions we can all buy into."

Although a number of non-profit NGOs have dedicated themselves to improving the lot of street children in KZN, the mandate for the management of issues pertaining to the children is held by the provincial Department of Social Development.

While criticism has periodically been levelled at that department, Hewitt feels that all role-players can make a significant contribution, provided the needs of the street children are paramount.

"You have to be in it for the kids, not because you’re serving your own agenda," he stressed. "Personally, I’d be delighted if, someday, I was out of a job. It would mean all the children were safe and happy in strong, supportive communities."

Skewed

The children’s activist says that while the media might sometimes distort issues for its own agenda, it is a vital means of educating the public and altering skewed perceptions.

"Readers need to examine the issues of why the children come to the city, and what happens to them on the streets. The popular misconception is that: ‘Kids like it on the streets’. In our experience they always run from something. There is always a ‘push factor’."

Umthombo sees reintegration as the only viable future for street children. The organisation provides both temporary support and long-term assistance to help former street children find new families or mend fractured family relationships. Their new environment is regularly monitored to make sure it is conducive to healthy childhood development.

"Aftercare is the most crucial aspect of our strategy," Hewitt asserts. He shatters the common myth that providing shelters will magically resolve the issue of children living on our city’s streets.

"Child and youth shelters are not the be-all and end-all. There are other important emerging services. These shelters are not always located within communities. When they are in the heart of the city, it is all too easy for the children to continue to access drugs. Their fundamental outlook does not improve.

"When the government subsidy dries up as a child turns 18, he or she has no option but to return to street life. If they had been reintegrated into communities instead, they would have a greater sense of purpose and belonging."

While Umthombo, together with I-Care, is contracted by the municipality to run a drop-in centre on Victoria Embankment to provide a place where children can receive assistance in crisis, or get food, Hewitt and other street child advocates are deeply concerned by the lack of rehabilitation-based child and youth care facilities, dubbed "first phase shelters", in the city.

"It is not just drugs that the children have to be weaned off," Hewitt explains. "They live in a state of constant trauma. This sort of facility is hugely important. It isn’t an institution housing children until they turn 18, but a shorter term, a loving and compassionate environment where the children can heal before they are reintegrated into communities."

Parallels

Responding to the contentious issue of the removal of street children whenever there is a major function in the city that will be attended by international delegates, Hewitt said there were parallels between the way South America and South Africa dealt with street children.

"I spent a lot of time in Brazil, observing approaches to street kids. The strategies employed in the two countries are disturbingly similar.

"We’re fully committed to ensuring that Durban makes a great success of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup, but not at the expense of street kids. If we are assisted to get the children off the streets in a caring manner, it will be a feather in Durban’s cap, and will show that the city truly cares about their fate."

# If you would like to make a contribution to the valuable work done by Umthombo, and at the same time assuage your guilt at the plight of children on our streets, here is the organisation’s banking details: Umthombo Street Children Action, First National Bank: Davenport branch, account number is 62077976656, branch code 220226.

          o This article was originally published on page 12 of Daily News on May 22, 2008

Hope is something to live for

    May 21 2008 at 11:51AM

By Vivian Attwood

With the help of I-CARE and Umthombo, two local NGOs that are achieving exceptional results in their outreach, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for street children, the Daily News has been able to interact with street children without arousing their fear or suspicion. They bear battle scars, but they are not completely broken.

Commander*, 15, followed his elder brother on to the streets a number of years ago. He wants to return home, but the pull of the streets is strong. He expressed doubt that he would be able to be reintegrated into his community.

"The streets are no good, though. There is no respect and you cannot learn," he said.

"Many of the children sniff glue to take away stress, but it hurts our legs and knees. It’s not easy to quickly leave glue because it is in our blood.

"It is dangerous for other children to come to the streets, but they are always running away from something. Some run because their mothers are not interested in them. That is my story. I have hope. One day I will go home. One day I will go to school again. Yes, I will go to school!"

Addiction

Bongani* is 17. His parents left him with his grandfather a long time ago, and disappeared. He is crippled from years of sniffing glue and walks in the disjointed way that the children call "Thobela", after a dance song.

Although his body is severely damaged, he dreams of leaving the streets and beating his addiction.

"I want to go to school. Then maybe I can be an aeroplane pilot," he said.

While there are fewer girls on the street than boys, their lives are, if anything, harder than those of their male counterparts.

They are extremely vulnerable to sexual predators, and may form a relationship with a youth simply in order to be awarded some degree of protection.

Sindi*: "I am 16 now and I have been on the streets since I was 12. The police chase us. They spray us with teargas, they take away our clothes, they hit us and sometimes they just lock us up for nothing.

"I was abused when I lived at home, by my stepfather. He would hit me, sometimes, if I came home but I had no food. Then he wouldn’t let me into the house. I became pregnant by my boyfriend. I couldn’t get any medical help. I discovered I was HIV-positive. I had my baby but my mother took her away."

Sindi’s baby subsequently died of unknown causes. No autopsy was performed and the young mother grieves for the daughter who was hers so briefly.

"I would like to go back to school but my Zulu is not good. If I can go back to school then I can get a good life. I could live well. I could live to a hundred years old, even though I am HIV positive," she said, eyes shining as she pictured those utopian circumstances.

Simphiwe*, 15, went on to the streets because his family was impoverished and his mother, who drank heavily, was unable to support him and his younger sister. The two children used to sleep on the streets of KwaMashu. Later they came to the city.

He says: "The streets are not good because many things are happening like people being stabbed, being knocked down by cars, getting sick with TB. There is no one to support you.

"Many people get old on the streets and still find no way to survive. Babies are born on the streets, but still nobody cares. The streets are bad. Our time has been long on the streets."

The story of 17-year-old Thembi* is a source of great encouragement for other street children. She went on to the streets at 12, after her mother died, and lived under a tree in the city with a group of other children.

Umthombo has helped her to return to school and pays a family to take care of her. They also provide books and school uniforms.

"The street taught me to fight. Now I am only fighting with my pen," she says with great pride.

"I am happy now I am at school. I would like to help other street kids so they don’t have to sleep on the streets. I would like them to have a better life than me."

Street survivor

Gift* is one of 18 former street children who work with I-CARE and Umthombo. Originally from Johannesburg, she came to Durban to seek work. What she found, instead, was exploitation and fear.

"I had seen Durban on the TV and thought there were lots of opportunities," she explained.

"At first I did get a job, cooking and cleaning for R10 a day. But my boss, a Sri Lankan, wanted to marry me so he could get citizenship. When I refused he threw me out on to the street.

"I was 18 and a lady told me about Tong Lok, a place in Point Road where many homeless people lived. We looked after ourselves, but I saw many bad things - many deaths. People died of HIV/Aids; people died when they were hit by cars on the street, people died when they got into fights and were stabbed."

Gift does outreach work among girls on the streets. She finds her job enormously fulfilling.

"The best thing about my job is taking a child back home and that child not coming back to the streets again. The worst thing is a child being raped by the police.

"It doesn’t happen that often, but it can happen to both girls and boys. We have a team member who specialises in investigations when something like that happens."

The soft-spoken outreach worker will always be haunted by memories of life as a street child.

"What I try to do is give hope to the children on the streets. Hope is something to live for."

* Not their real names

          o This article was originally published on page 10 of Daily News on May 21, 2008

From scavenger to survivor

May 20 2008 at 02:23PM

By VIVIAN ATTWOOD.

To begin to understand what life is like for a street child, one would need to spend months building bonds of trust. All children on the streets have a profound mistrust of strangers, particularly adults.

Virtually without exception they have been subjected to neglect and abuse at the hands of those who should have cared for them.

Bulelwa Hewitt should know. The 27-year-old mother of two survived life on a waste dump, and later the streets of East London, to come full circle to the point where she and her husband, Tom, founded the Umthombo project for street children, based in Durban. The organisation is dedicated to "turning despair into hope on the streets of South Africa".

Bulelwa is highly articulate and radiates vitality; a far cry from the skinny child who sniffed benzine or thinners to ward off persistent hunger and her feelings of helplessness as she tried to raise her younger brother and sister by scavenging for scraps in dustbins.

She lavishes love on her sons, determined that they should never feel the pain of rejection she experienced.

Contemplating motherhood was a daunting prospect for Bulelwa, because she had had no role model. "I had intensive counselling when I was pregnant.I felt it was my fault that I was sexually abused as a child," she recounted.

"I used to wake up screaming in the night. ‘What happens if I raise my child the way I was raised?’ I thought. My therapist just listened while I talked and cried."

With tremendous support from her husband, Bulelwa conquered her fears, and equipped herself to be a mom by reading "just about everything ever written on the subject of childbirth and child rearing". To see her with her boys today, no one would imagine the turmoil she endured.

Discarded lives

The children’s activist was born into a community with little hope for the future, beyond finding the next drink or cigarette. Her mother and step-father lived in a makeshift shack on the edge of the East London municipal waste dump.

Bulelwa and her two younger siblings, Nosiphiwe and Bulelani, spent their days scouring the dump for anything that could be eaten or sold. Their mother kept them out of school for that purpose.

"We were scavengers, essentially. We sold cardboard, tin cans and reject sweets and made cheap alcohol from pineapples," Bulelwa said. "On Fridays, we’d go out on the streets. We slept underneath a skateboarding ramp there. On a Tuesday we’d go back to the squatter camp."

The reason the children sought the streets at weekends was simple. "Over the weekend there was a lot of drinking, and then we suffered verbal, physical and sexual abuse from neighbours," Bulelwa explained.

"We moved like that, back and forth. There were people on the street living under plastic bags and in small boxes like dog kennels. Other kids from the squatter camp joined us. We became like a family unit and looked out for one another."

Bulelwa was determined to keep Nosiphiwe away from their stepfather, who had started sexually molesting her. She has no idea how old she was when she shepherded her little band onto the streets in 1993, but estimated she was around nine.

"Things had just got too bad at home. My stepfather would beat us for mentioning our father’s name. He beat my mom too." Bulelwa had also been sexually assaulted by men in the camp by the time she made her desperate decision.

"Life on the streets wasn’t really better than on the dump, but there was more chance of finding food," she said.

"At night when the restaurants closed we would wait to grab the food they threw away. We also begged for money and then we either bought food or benzine or thinners to sniff.

"It made me see strange things, like snakes coming out of the sea, but I wasn’t scared. It sent me into a world of my own, and helped block out the past. It took away my hunger and made me bolder."

Bulelwa and her siblings were headed down a one-way road. Malnourished and substance addicted, they were bound to contract disease and die young. A fellow street child, an older youth, had been observing the little band, and intervened.

"Muntsu, as we called him, took us to a street children’s shelter close to town. He knocked on the door and left us there," she remembered.

At first the children thought they were in paradise. They were given nourishing food, warm blankets and new clothes. But the shelter was mismanaged and the food supply began to diminish. Their caregivers, too, showed little sympathy for their charges.

"As more kids came, the house mothers started to show us less warmth. When I did something wrong they would say ‘No wonder you were on the streets’. There was a total lack of understanding. Then they began to hit us. My sister was beaten because she was hungry and stole some food. It reminded me of my past."

Bulelwa left the shelter in 1998, having completed Standard 7. Although she was forced to return to the squalor of the dump, there was another guardian angel waiting in the wings.

Sister Pam van der Westhuizen, a coloured nurse, ran a soup kitchen at the dump, and took a motherly interest in Bulelwa and a group of her friends.

She would invite them home on a Sunday, where they would get a good bath, be given fresh clothes and settle down to a good meal after attending church. Her faith in Bulelwa’s potential was poured liberally onto the child’s parched spirit.

"She didn’t do what she did for any ulterior motive. She was simply a good woman," said Bulelwa. "After that, Nosipho Ntontela, who worked with children on the streets of East London, became my ‘mom’."

Bulelwa went to live with the social worker, eventually moving with her to Durban, where Nosipho became involved with an outreach programme for street kids. Today she is the office administrator for Umthombo, and the two women are as close as mother and daughter.

Scars run deep

In terms of her biological mother, Bulelwa still grapples with feelings of pain and anger. "When I was six months pregnant with my first child, in 2004, I went back to the dump to visit my mother.

"It was difficult, because I don’t have any sort of relationship with her. I have gone back since, so that the boys can have a sense of where they come from. When my mother is drunk she shouts and calls them her ‘mlungu grandchildren’. It makes me so angry and frustrated."

Bulelwa recently learned that her childhood saviour, Muntsu, had died of TB. "He couldn’t get off the streets, although he saved us. He had internalised the lifestyle," she said. "Most of the children who were my friends have died or have Aids."

Bulelwa’s younger sister, Nosiphiwe, lives in the squatter camp and has a baby. Her brother, Bulelani, is serving a 12-year jail term for being an accessory to murder.

Her mother and stepfather are still together, but she has finally been reunited with her own father, thanks to the intervention of an older brother who relocated to Cape Town when she was a child.

"My mother always maintained my father was dead, and she had no family, but I have met her relatives, and they embraced Tom and me and the children with the greatest excitement," Bulelwa said animatedly.

"It was a bit like the return of the prodigal daughter. My father cried when he heard what we had endured on the streets. We just clicked when we first met, and now I have a great relationship with him."

On a recent visit to East London, Sister Pam presented her former protégée with an album documenting, in letters and photographs, the years during which she cared for the motley little band of children from the nearby squatter camp. It is one of Bulelwa’s most treasured possessions.

Reflecting on her fractured childhood, Bulelwa shows surprisingly little rancour, yet her pain is evident. "Growing up, I didn’t get the love, support or attention that a child should receive.

"Instead, I was subjected to violence and other forms of abuse. No-one was interested in knowing what forced us out onto the street. We were seen as a nuisance

"We had to make our own little families to feel safe. The love and support within the group is so important. You are terribly frightened until you become part of the group."

The brave woman fears she will always be torn between her past and her present reality.

"There’s a chapter I can never close properly. That dump is part of who I am. Having my kids opened a new chapter, but the past is still unresolved."

Rwanda: 300 Street Kids Attend "Ingando"
The New Times (Kigali)

11 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008

Godfrey Ntagungira
Kigali

The Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion in the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday picked up 330 kids from Kigali streets and enrolled them on a two-week rehabilitation solidarity camp (ingando).

According to the minister, Dr Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, the street children will attend the solidarity camp then they will be facilitated to go back to school.

She said the children will be taught a number of subjects that will include human rights values and the history of Rwanda.

"At the end of the solidarity camp, the ministry will identify those who can be taken back to primary or technical schools and others will get the opportunity join catch-up classes for a while before sitting for primary leaving examinations," she noted.

BURKINA FASO: Fresh approach to street children

Photo: Nicholas Reader/IRIN

OUAGADOUGOU, 8 May 2008 (IRIN) - With an increased number of children living in the streets of urban areas in Burkina Faso, the government and several non-governmental organisations are coming up with new approaches to address the problem.

“If we can help relieve parents’ poverty this will prevent children from turning to the streets in the first place,” Haridatou Congo, who leads the children’s national action plan at the ministry of social welfare, told IRIN.

In 2007 the government launched a US $9.8 million programme to help families whose children may be at risk of taking to the streets, by paying school fees, giving food, and creating community activities for children.

Congo said the government would also take “vigorous measures” to enforce a 1996 law banning begging, though she did not lay out details of the measures.

Thousands of children, some as young as seven years old, come to the country’s cities from rural areas and end up living on the streets.

“So far progress in reuniting them with their families has been very slow," she said, “and the longer children stay on the streets the harder it gets to send them back home.”

Up to 40 percent of the street children come from Koranic schools where they have to beg for alms to help fund their education, Congo said.

An increasing number the street children are girls, said Joel Kargougou, a former street child who now runs a local NGO for orphaned children called AMPO.

“Girls are most vulnerable and some of them may be HIV positive or pregnant and so they are not accepted in their home villages,” he said. 

Many children end up on the streets when their parents migrate to find work or they are pushed by their families because of poverty.

The Burkina Faso Red Cross (BFRC) is trying to address the problem at its source by supporting 225 women in five provinces in rural areas with 50,000 loans to generate income so that they are better able to care for their children.

But Congo, of the ministry of welfare, said that even with the US$9.8 million of the programme for street children, it receives less than one percent of the government’s annual budget.

In late 2007 the government announced that NGOs working with street children would receive US$117,000 each year but the NGOs IRIN contacted said they have so far not received any money.

AMPO is using its limited funds to provide skills to street children with training to become tailors and gardeners.

“We do not have the means to follow up to see how all the children we train are doing,” Kargougou said. “For all we know they just end up back on the streets again,” he said.

Begging tools

    May 08 2008 at 12:43PM

The wheels of the truck narrowly miss the small boy crouching in the road at the confluence of Masabalala Yengwa Avenue and (NMR) and Argyle Road in Durban.

He is humming tunelessly and playing with a piece of splintered wood, pretending to be taking part in the A1 Grand Prix.

As the truck driver registers the child, and swerves to avoid him, a girl who looks no older than three is shaking an empty milk carton to elicit money from another car at the busy off-ramp.

On the other side of the four-way stop, a woman with a baby on her hip directs soulful looks at passers-by, hoping they will toss her a few coins out of sympathy for the infant.

‘To give, or not to give, is the conundrum’
Travelling along Argyle Road and other main arterial access points to the city entails running the gamut of an assortment of beggars each day. The problem is particularly acute at peak traffic times, when frustrated motorists do their best either to reach work, or get out of town and head home.

Darting between cars to beg for money is not a risk-free occupation at the best of times. With the advent of ever-younger beggars on the streets, there is a real risk these children will be injured or killed.

Appealing

Most motorists with any compassion feel torn each time they see beggar children, shoeless and ragged in appearance, appealing for assistance.

To give, or not to give, is the conundrum. Are we helping to keep young people on the street if we "encourage" them by doling out cash, or are we simply being callous when we shake our heads censoriously or pointedly look straight ahead as if we haven’t seen them?

‘Street children are entitled to their basic human rights’
Linda Treadwell, director of the I Care foundation for street children, is emphatic that well-meaning donors can only make a difference to the future of a street child if they decline to give him or her money.

She confirms that there appears to be an increased incidence of babies and toddlers being used as pawns by beggars who are often unrelated to them, but who simply "borrow" the children to elicit sympathy.

"The older children are less attractive magnets for donations, so these people are using the youngest children they can find. It’s a racket, and some young beggars are also intimidated by their peers and older children," she said.

"The small children are often not directly related to those who take them on to the streets, but are instead members of extended families, or the children of friends or neighbours."

When the Daily News photographer tried to get candid shots of children begging on Argyle Road, they invariably raised their T-shirts to cover their faces.

Treadwell explained that the children are aware a stigma adheres to what they are doing.

"Also, some are afraid of being recognised and taken back to the homes they have run away from," she said.

Dispelling the notion that all street children are unprotected waifs dumped on the streets against their will, she added: "Some of the youngsters are quite clever. They get paid a share of the spoils, and can get quite aggressive when they are reprimanded."

The I Care director is passionate about the work the foundation does in rehabilitating street children, and attempting either to return them to a family environment or find alternative shelter and education for them.

"It is no life for a child," she said emphatically.

"They are at great risk on the streets. Recently one of the kids I was working with was stabbed and killed in a fight over glue.

"The highly addictive glue the children are sold by unscrupulous dealers causes irreversible brain damage, and there have been cases of what is termed ’sudden sniffing death’.

"Children have been run over by cars and killed, and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and Aids are rife."

Round-ups

Tom Hewitt, who has run the Umthombo (Wellness) Project for street children in eThekweni since 1998, works in close conjunction with I Care.

He says that while most archetypal street children have run away from untenable home circumstances, the issue of "borrowing" babies and children for begging is an even more problematic one to tackle.

"The women who bring their own and others’ children on to the streets to beg have been registered for welfare benefits in an attempt to stop their activities, but they come back anyway. We really need to look at finding compassionate, legal solutions."

Hewitt spoke out firmly regarding the controversial removal of street children from eThekwini during major tourism events.

"Round-ups don’t work. Street children are entitled to their basic human rights during the process of rehabilitating them and relocating them to more conducive environments," he said.

"We are here to provide their basic rights, change their behavioural patterns and empower them to make life decisions that will ensure they have a viable future.

"It has been a controversial decade," he continued.

"Durban lacks a really unified city-wide strategy for street children. The bottom line, though, is that it is not a bottomless pit. Together we can devise adequate means to deal with the issue."

His compassion evident, he said: "We have to remember they are children. They’re on our streets for a reason. They come with trauma and we can’t write them off as criminals.

"They are the most vulnerable and marginalised sector of society. They are not our problem, but rather our responsibility. In the run-up to 2010 I hope the provincial department of social development remembers the needs of these children."

Outreach

I Care is under contract to the eThekwini Municipality to run a "drop-in" centre in the city.

There is at present no reception centre, however, which makes it difficult for outreach workers to find alternative accommodation for street children.

The drop-in centre, at the corner of Victoria Embankment and Stanger street, is manned around the clock and affords a brief respite from the inhospitable city streets for frequently traumatised children.

Umthombo has a street outreach team of 10 people, and runs a mobile health unit for street children. The first of its kind, the unit is fully equipped and manned by trained paramedics and senior nurses.

"This is a real lifeline for the children, because they are not able to access healthcare through the regular channels," Hewitt said.

"Fortunately we (outreach workers) have the luxury of time on our side," he continued.

"We build bonds of trust with the kids over a long period. Most of them are initially very wary of adults."

Hewitt has known some of the street children with whom he works since they were very small.

While he is optimistic regarding the long-term prospects for rehabilitation, and maintains the problem will not spiral out of control as long as there are concerned people who have the children’s best interests at heart, his work often impacts on him in a painful way.

"We have a good track record of getting them off the streets, but the sad thing is that I am ‘outgrowing’ many of them.

"They die," he said quietly.

As a testament to the selfless work done by people like Hewitt, Treadwell and others, 18 staff within their combined organisations are former street children who have kicked addictions, gone back to school and are living productive lives.

I Care is a non-profit organisation dedicated to finding meaningful and sustainable solutions to the challenge of street children in South Africa. The foundation is funded entirely by corporate and private donations.

If you really care about the plight of street children, your assistance would be gratefully received.

Make your donation to: Nedbank, account number 1648064566, KZN Business Branch, Code 164826.

Find out more about I Care on their website : www.icare.co.za