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ZIMBABWE: Church school gives street kids a shot at education
IRIN News
February 11, 2005

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=45521

HARARE - Fortune Hakata dreams of becoming a pilot. Each morning, like any other 14-year-old, he leaves home for school; at the end of the day he makes his way home - to a street corner in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

Together with 53 others, Fortune attends the Presbyterian Children's Club, which offers six years of primary schooling to street kids between the ages of 6 and 14. Each year, with the assistance of sponsors, it facilitates the entry of 18 children into the normal school system. The total number of street kids in Harare is estimated at 5,000.

The school consists of a large room partitioned into six classrooms, each seating 10 to 12 children. Every morning the children wash and change into their school uniforms, followed by lessons and sports, with breaks for tea and lunch. At 2.30 pm they change back into their usual clothes and resume their lives on the streets.

Economic circumstances drove Fortune and his family onto the streets. After four years of begging, he started attending the school and has been there for three years. "When I joined, I had only done Grade One - I couldn't even write my own name. But now, although I am an average pupil, I can at least read and write," he told IRIN.

"His case is typical of many of the children who come here. They come onto the streets alone or with parents, because they are poverty stricken, have problems at home, or have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS," said Alice Chikomo, a retired teacher and wife of the former Presbyterian minister who runs the school.

Christian counselling is an important part of the school curriculum. "These children have been exposed to many horrors, including abuse and glue sniffing. We try to counsel them, so that they can become as normal as any other child," Chikomo explained.

The church school has been operating since 1996. It began as a soup kitchen and later extended its services to include education for the street kids it served, and now has an outreach programme scouting for really desperate cases.

Parents were not always keen to allow the kids to attend school. "Some of their mothers really fought with us - they said we are taking away their children when they needed them to work for them," Chikomo remarked.

To convince the mothers to allow their children to come, the school offers them twice-weekly skills training in sewing, tie-and-dye techniques and knitting. The mothers are encouraged to sell what they produce to augment their street incomes. Open days are held and parents are invited to inspect their children's books, discuss their progress and admire articles from the skills training programme.

Twenty-four of the street kids currently attending the school are girls. The plight of girl pupils on the street is a source of concern to the school, which would like to set up a home for them, said Chikomo.

Fourteen-year-old Mercy Moyo spoke of nights with little sleep as she and her friends struggled to hide from potential male abusers who roamed the dark streets.

Ten years and 450 pupils later, Chikomo said although the school's achievements have been modest, the biggest has been raising the literacy level of the kids. "When they come here, they have little or no education, but we teach these children to read and write, and that's our success story - even though most of them do not have formal high school paper qualifications at the end of the day."

Chikomo knows of one child who is expected to go to university, while six children have passed their O level examinations. One of the six, Melania Mbizi, now 19, returned to the school as a teacher after undergoing in-service training on how to handle children with special problems, along with other volunteer teachers at the school. She has been back at the school for three years, but a large number of pupils have remained on the streets after their formal schooling.

The school hopes to change this. It has obtained a piece of land from a chief in the Mhondoro communal lands outside Harare and, funds permitting, plans to set up a post-school programme to offer skills training in farming, carpentry and sewing, Chikomo told IRIN. "We want to make sure that they are properly integrated into society after school - going back onto the streets again, begging and washing cars, does not give them a future."

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