By Joan Townsend | Executive Director, Retrak America
Late last year, Retrak, with its partner Chisomo Children’s Club, performed a survey of children on the streets of Blantyre and Lilongwe, Malawi. Counting street children is a huge challenge, not least because of their mobility and distrust of adults. Yet reliable and accurate measures of street child populations can help ensure that we meet children’s needs in the right way. The communities warmly welcomed the enumerators, commenting that they were pleased that someone was trying to help these children.
During the headcount, the participants mapped out the city and highlighted the areas where they knew street children were hanging around. We then sent teams into all these areas for the count. In both Lilongwe and Blantyre we found many children in some unexpected places. The enumerators came back full of stories from the children they interviewed. One boy had come to the streets to beg and try to earn school fees, but got lost and was desperate to get home again. A girl was brought by her auntie into town to find work, but the work was in a bar, and she ended up being abused by the patrons. Another small boy was wandering the streets alone and did not even know his village name. A group of lads survived by collecting bottles and scrap metal and sleeping under the railway bridge. One child in our survey of Lilongwe told us "There's completely no one to stay with me; my parents passed away and my other relatives refused to look after me." These are all heart-breaking stories of young lives torn apart by forces they have no control over.
Thankfully, Chisomo Children's Club is on the ground in Malawi to help children get off the streets and back with a loving family. But there are far more children on the streets than CCC has the capacity to help. That's why we urgently need help from our supporters and regular givers to reach street children with services.
Our next progress report from Malawi will discuss the final results of the enumeration study. Special thanks go to David Whitford and Joanna Wakia for their leadership with the headcount.
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