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On the streets of Zimbabwe
Duduzile Moyo, Streets Ahead
Extracted from Street Child Africa Newsletter Spring 2009
April 01, 2009

http://www.waidev2.com/php/PDFS/STUDIO_v2_Asset_Library/3366---PDF.pdf (Direct link to 8 page PDF file of newsletter)

Streets Ahead has been working with children living and working on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, since 1991. It is a welfare organisation well known for its interventions for children living on the streets and for its efforts in reunifying them with their families or placing them into alternative care.

Zimbabwe has gone through a lot of economic and political disturbances in the last three years. The drought and the land reform programme has caused a slump in food production and put a strain on families' ability to feed their children. This has increased the number of children seeking refuge on the streets.

During the recent cholera outbreak, we were inundated with calls for assistance from the children and have now embarked on a programme to ensure that children living on the streets have access to clean water, by providing buckets, water-purifying tablets and soap. The HIV peer project is also making great strides in working with sexually-active youths and encouraging them to seek treatment for their STIs.

In the last year, Streets Ahead reintegrated 89 children into the home environment. Most of families receiving the children were extended families with their own children to look after, but they were still very willing to take them in. Ten of the reunited children qualified for educational support, and this is one big factor which ensures sustained reunification, as children are meaningfully engaged and enjoy their right to access education. In Zimbabwe, it is every child's desire to go to school, but they cannot concentrate on school if they live in abusive homes. In schools and communities where we reunite children, we also give talks to promote and sensitise people to children's rights.

A typical case is that of Daniel: he is a double orphan who was placed in a government institution in 2005, but he ran away and came back to the streets. The Department of Social Welfare brought him to Streets Ahead, where he was successfully reunified with his maternal uncle, together with his 3 siblings who had earlier run away from a violently abusive aunt. The uncle's family are subsistence farmers and now care for 14 orphans. The family, while very willing to care for the children, is economically strained and has difficulties in meeting all the basic needs of the 14 orphans.

The Streets Ahead team shows appreciation to families taking in children from the streets, because not all people bond with children that are not their own, let alone to those that have been on the streets with the reputation which goes with it. Follow-up visits to families are carried out, and these increase the children's sense of worthiness as they realise that we care enough to follow up on their welfare. Streets Ahead always gets positive feedback about our dedication to working with the street children.

Despite economic problems in Zimbabwe, the team at Streets Ahead has continued working with street children because of what the children experience on the streets. We will not rest until we have assisted a child on the streets, knowing that what they will go through is something you would not want for your child: hunger, physical and sexual abuse and neglect."

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