|
Street Children Find
Refuge In Sewers
In the fading evening light, the wide boulevards of Luanda
are virtually silent but for a ragged army of filthy street children running barefoot as they head home to the sewers. Below the streets, in complex sewers laid by the Portuguese settlers a century ago,
a classic Dickens nightmare is played out as the children and the rats compete for scraps of food.
Angola's Children Bearing
The Greatest Cost Of War
Separated
from their families and unable to rely on kinship networks, they tend to organize into smaller groups with an older child
protecting younger children, socially isolated in ghettoized buildings. Many are orphaned or abandoned; some have left starving
families or abusive environments. For children, survival requires washing cars, carrying water, scavenging in dustbins or
prostituting themselves.
We fund
a safe house for homeless children in a city in Angola.
We provide refuge, medical
care, food, comfort and education.
Links are
made to reunite the children with their families or alternatively to find good foster homes. A successful outcome for each
child depends on long term support and counselling to families and foster carers.
Our teams work daily
on the streets together with the local Department of Child Protection in an outreach programme. It identifies homeless children
very early in their life on the street before they succumb to the inevitable risks of substance abuse and criminality.
We offer food, friendship
and support to each street child before they are admitted to our refuge.
We also provide "drop-in"
day care facilities for children who do not wish to be admitted so that they still have access to medical care, showers, food
and support services.
The
project also delivers
|
A back-to-school programme via special literacy classes
An annual summer camp in the country or by the sea
Weekly arts and music
therapy
Specialist drama and
conflict resolution therapy sessions by a resident psychologist and visiting specialists
Sports activities
via a local high school sports initiative
Long-term follow-up
where children have been reunited with their families
Drop-in support care
to adolescents who have left our safe house and become independent
An excellent record
in campaigning with the state and other NGO’s for good services and reintegration into school and the community for
former street children
Our project offers solutions that
are sensitive to each child's needs and wishes - whether this be reintegration with their family, fostering, adoption or long
term care with us. |
|
