Our Charities

Street Child Africa

The situation:
Hundreds of thousands of children live, work and sleep on the streets of every African country. AIDS, massive poverty, and the breakdown of the family are causing the numbers to increase alarmingly all the time, as more and more children migrate to the big cities in a desperate bid to find a better quality of life and economic independence.

Despite the fact that in the cities they will quickly become street children – used, abused exploited, and amongst the poorest of the poor, such a life is still the most attractive option compared to returning to rural homes where they will find, quite literally, nothing.

Nowadays, new generations of babies are being born on the streets to parents who themselves are street children – these babies will never know any other way of life without outside help. Despite this, Street Child Africa remains the only charity in the UK solely dedicated to helping Africa’s street children.

Street Child Africa:
Street Child Africa is the only charity in the UK completely dedicated to giving the children and babies who live, work and sleep on Africa’s streets a chance at a better life, by offering them vocational training, education, healthcare, baby care, counselling and friendship. Street Child Africa aims to give every street child the chance to turn their own life around and enjoy a better future free from poverty, disease and abuse. Street Child Africa aims to give street children hope.

Our responsibility is to raise funds and awareness in the developed world on behalf of Africa’s street children. As well as this, we lobby on behalf of Africa’s street children to make people aware of this disgraceful situation, and to tell them what they can do to make things better for a street child in Africa.

Specifically, Street Child Africa assists street children in the following ways:

Street work: trained social workers seek out and meet the children on the streets, befriending them, counselling them, and encouraging the to visit a refuge for assistance. The innovative Street Workers Training Programme provides funding for street workers to find new young African social workers, and teach them how to relate to children who live on the streets, and how to deal with the difficult and often dangerous aspects of this demanding but essential job.

Baby care: providing crèches for young street mothers, so that they have somewhere safe to leave their babies so that they can find casual work and earn enough money to eat. They can also leave their babies in the crèches if they wish to begin educational sponsorship or vocational training with the support of Street Child Africa. This baby care programme is unique of its kind in sub-saharan Africa.

Ante and post natal care: for the many street girls who end up pregnant, frightened, and vulnerable at a very young age.
Refuges: providing basic literacy and maths classes, demonstrations in various skills and crafts, recreational facilities, counselling, medical care, and a safe place for street children to play and rest.

Sponsorship: sponsorship lasts 3 years, and a street child is provided with everything they need including placement with a family, counselling support, food, clothes, tools, and travel expenses. They may choose to learn a trade, or to go to school and gain a qualification. On completion of their training, they are assisted in finding employment and somewhere to live.

Since 1998, Street Child Africa have helped at least 400 children undergo vocational sponsorship and many have chosen to leave the streets through this programme – some ex street children have even returned to the agencies which helped them in the first place in order to work there, and help future generations of street children who are in the same desperate situation which they themselves were once in.

For more information: http://www.streetchildafrica.co.uk or donations: http://www.justgiving.com