Helping street children to be Street Smart

August marked the start of the new academic year in Kenya.  Usually, this particular academic year would have commenced in January but, with the long lock-down of 2020, the revised programme to catch up 'the lost year' has involved shortening holidays and cramming more into terms with a resultant change in dates of new academic years for this and next year.  This has been very hard for many families to cope with as, the crammed school year has resulted in 4 terms in the past 12 months rather than the usual 3 with the accompanying financial burden of school fees and costs.   Despite the claim that education is free in Kenya; this is not the case.  Only the tuition element of education in government schools is free.  As there are not enough government schools accessible to a large part of the population, many children have either to board at school or to attend private schools and this brings increased cost.  There is still the cost of boarding supplies, books and stationary, transport, exam and administration fees, uniforms, bags and shoes etc.  This is a considerable burden.  As an example, one term of day school at a government high school (including lunch and transport, uniform etc) is the equivalent of one to two month's salary for a school teacher.  One term of government boarding school would be approximately double that.  In families where only one parent has a reasonable income and there are two or three children to educate, it would take most of their income just to pay schooling.  

Understandably, at the beginning of this academic year our social workers were kept busy finding youngsters on the streets who should have been back at school but whose parents were still scrambling to find funds to pay fees or buy uniform for new schools where children were moving to high schools.  Many children started back late and some have still not managed to get to school at all.  These are families we are eager to help to get children the education they deserve and to get them off the streets while they await education.  

We have also spent time with many parents discussing alternatives to high school education for some youths where vocational training may be a better and more affordable choice for them and many have entered various training programmes such as computer training, plumbing, electrical etc.

Please consider a small donation to help some of these children and youths to get a chance at their choice of education in school or vocation training.   Thank you.

To say this past year has been challenging for our Street Smart operation would be a huge understatement.  First of all, we had a full lockdown in March 2020 which went on for the remainder of the year.  This closed schools and centres such as ours and also put our mobile school on hold.  We faced many restrictions including a curfew which made it very difficult to do our street outreach work in the early mornings and evenings.  However, we did manage to continue a limited outreach and reintegrated many children home from the streets during 2020, providing as much assistance as we could in suffering households to ensure the children could safely remain home.  

In January, schools reopened but our centre faced fresh challenges from a major development programme in town which included demolishing a whole line of businesses (including our centre) to make way for a major new road and extension of the railway line.  So, imagine how down we were - finally allowed to reopen after 9 months, only to find ourselves 2 weeks later facing bulldozers.

As we scrambled to look at alternatives, we were tipped off that a further lockdown was in the works and we are currently now back in lockdown as Covid 19 numbers rise in Kenya.  

So, never an organisation to give up, we continue to look for funds and implement street outreach without using a drop in centre and working around curfew and regulations.  We are still successfully reintegrating children and doing all we can to assist with home-based care.  The good thing about the current lockdown is that businesses were not closed this time and so most families can still earn a living.  So our present outlook is more positive than all the months of 2020 when many businesses were forced to close.

We remain optimistic that, as better Covid 19 treatments are found and as more people can access the vaccines, the numbers will reduce and we will be able to find funding to open a new drop in centre.  In the meantime, we are reaching as many as we can.

Thanks for all your support at this difficult time.