Reintegrate Street-Connected Children in Kitale

This month we want to tell you about one of the harder aspects of our work with street-connnected young people. In Kenya, and in other countries, authorities who want to show that they are dealing with the 'street child problem' to make the town look cleaner, will take an approach that is far from child-centred.  They use force to 'round-up' the children from the streets. In Kitale, these round-ups can be an annual event - or more often if an election is coming up. Advocacy efforts by CRK have occasionally resulted in these round-ups being deferred to allow us to time to intervene and secure places of safety for the children while the roundups happen.  And we are working hard to persuade authorities that round-ups are ineffective in dealing with the issue of children on the streets in the long-term. 

Given that many children are on the streets because adults let them down, it takes time to build trust and support them through their reintegration journey. Our social workers work with young people on the street building relationships of trust and working with them to make decisions to leave the street in their own time. However, it is difficult to change the system of roundups as officials change, moving to new areas or being promoted and the new incumbents are not always aware of the effects of round-ups. Occasionally, the orders for round-ups come from outside the district at a higher level.  

Sadly, in early May, over 80 children were rounded up from the streets with no warning, and taken into cells, the majority them were boys aged between 6 and 14. The children spent the night in jail and received no food during this time.  In the morning, they were taken to the Magistrate’s Court, which was overwhelmed with the numbers and had to postpone its previously scheduled cases for the day.  We worked hard to get these children released into our care to avoid them remaining in an adult prison. 

Some of the older children ran off as soon as they were released, however, over 60 children agreed to go into our centre.  Over the next few days, a few more left us for the streets. Our social workers continue to work with these as part of their outreach programmes. Most of the children remain with us and we are working hard to counsel them, investigate their homes and the reasons for their being on the streets.  Some cases are simple to rectify and several children have already been taken home.  Some cases require longer term intervention at home to relieve poverty issues, mediate disagreements and provide counseling.  Some children need to be treated for addiction issues, or to be taken to a relative for care if their former home is not considered safe and welcoming.  These children will remain with us for up to six months while the reintegration process takes place. 

Usually, we have a target number of children in a month that we can reach out to and work with in a controlled manner to increase our likelihood of successful reintegration.  Like all organisations, we have a budget and limited manpower.  Round-ups put considerable pressure on our staff and finances.  Taking in 60 children involves extra food, mattresses, blankets, transport, medical and staff costs.  That has to be maintained beyond the initial emergency period of getting the children out of jail for as long as it takes to reintegrate them. However, we will do all we can to get these children to safe homes and to ask our supporters to try and help out financially.

In the meantime, we are partnering with other organisations in Kenya to more effectively work with the authorities to tackle the issue of children on the streets in a way that is acceptable and beneficial to all – especially the children.  No child should spend a night in jail for being in need of care and protection.

Thank you again for your support of CRK's work.

In Kitale we have been getting the children ready for a new year at school. January is always a busy time of year, getting new uniform, stationary and other school resources for the children staying at CRK's long-term transition centre and for the children staying at home whose families need extra support. Our social workers also check in on the children we do not provide financial support for, but who we are still monitoring at home, to check that everything is in order for the new year at school. Despite the busy-ness it is always a lovely time of year, watching them continue with their journeys at home, especially those who have more recently been reintegrated. One of those children this year is Brian. 

Brian was not identified by our social workers on the streets of Kitale, but was picked up in Tanzania by another project working with street-connected children. CRK have been involved in an ongoing knowledge and skills exchange programme with RCA Mwanza and have been collaborating with them and other organisations to ensure that children who cross country borders during their migrations to the street are assisted to return. Brian had informed the social workers in Tanzania that his parents lived in Nairobi and CRK staff agreed to bring him back to Kenya in order to facilitate his reintegration.

Sadly, the reintegration process was not as straight forward as we had hoped. Brian gave us a telephone number for his stepmother, but she did not want him back home, asking that CRK look after him for good. Therefore, while CRK staff worked to find a solution to this problem, Brian was transferred to the long-term transition centre where he was able to attend Liyavo primary school.

Once he had settled in at Liyavo, and felt he could trust the staff, Brian eventually told us about a grandmother in Nyanza. He provided directions to his grandmother’s home, where social workers found her still mourning his disappearance. Brian orignally left home with a group of other boys, he says, when life at home became tough since he was used to life in Nairobi, he did not want to stay in the village without major social amenities. Although he lived with his siblings in the village, his parents had remained in Nairobi and he was not altogether happy with this arrangement.

When they visited, the social workers found a loving family, headed by both his grandparents. They have two cows that they milk and two acres of rocky land that is not suitable for growing crops, but is good for grazing. Brian’s father sends regular payments that sustain the needs of the family and their home was neat, well-maintained and organised.

Brian’s grandparents were keen to have him back and together with the social workers began to prepare for him to return to their care, and continue with his education, which is important if he is to complete school and become a doctor as he says he wants to. Being at their home also means that Brian can continue to establish lasting relationships with his siblings. He also agreed that being at his grandparents' home was a good option.

Brian was returned to his grandparents in September 2017 and completed the final term of the year in the local primary school. He has started back for the new year and we are looking forward to seeing what happens next in his education journey. We maintain regular communication with him and his grandmother by phone, and will conduct a home visit in the next few months. He is so far doing well and adapting to the life back in the village. 

We are able to support children like Brian because of your support. Thank you again for choosing CRK. 

Best Wishes,

Su

Dear Supporters,

With one month left to go of 2017 we would like to take the time to thank you for all your support over the last year. It has been a year full of challenges brought about by two presidential elections and the drought affecting North eastern Kenya. With your help, and support from other donors we have been able to continue with our work and reach out to more children like David.

David is 13 years old and lives with his father, sister, and twin brother. David's father is an alcoholic and subjected the children to verbal and physical abuse. David chose to walk 15km to Kitale to escape this abuse, while his siblings took refuge at paternal uncle. Because CRK conducts regular outreach work around the town and the social workers walk the streets daily to check in with the children living and working in the area, they were able to identify David as a new arrival and start a process of reintegration.  

Working closely with the local children's police unit, David was taken to CRK's centre at Birunda. At the centre, David was looked after by the staff and began to settle in and make friends with the other children. He gradually started to feel happy and to tell the staff about his home situation. CRK began to work with David’s uncle, with whom his siblings were staying, with the aim of reintegrating him back into a family home and making sure that all the children were safe and being adequately supported.

David's extended family practice small scale mixed farming (both crops and animals) in a remote area that experiences water logging during rainy seasons. Their housing consists of semi-permanent iron sheet roofed houses, which can be cold (especially during the rainy season). Including David and his siblings, six children live with the uncle. Initially, family visits were carried out to begin counselling the father about responsible parenting and preparing the uncle and his wife to take on parental responsibility for the children.

The sessions with the father helped him to identify his strengths and aspirations in life and what he needed to do to work towards achieving them. He was also encouraged to change his attitidues and recognise that he had been abusing his children becasue he didn't know how to deal with his frustrations and had become violent towards them instead of caring for them.

Both David's father and his unlce were given training in bio-intensive agriculture, to help improve the yields from their land, and ongoing psychosocial support. David has been reintegrated back to into his family, where his uncle takes on responsibility for ensuring that the children are cared for and supporting his brother, David's father, to maintain his positive life changes.

CRK have assisted the family with school uniform to get the children enrolled in school. David is currently in class 5. He is good at mathematics, wants to be an accountant in a bank and hopes to be a good father to his children in the future. Ensuring that children are able to enjoy supportive family environments, and consequently stay in school, is at the centre of our work and support from donors like you ensure that we are able to continue to provide support to the children arriving on the streets of Kitale. 

If you are considering supporting CRK projects this Christmas, GlobalGiving are currently running the Year-End Campaign, which gives organisations participating the chance to win prizes (based on the number of donors and the total amount raised) until December 31st 2017. As part of this campaign, the first installment of all recurring monthly donations up to $200 (approx £150) will be matched 100% (as long as they remain active for three months). 

Whether or not you do support us in the Year-End Campaign, thank you so much for your support of CRK's work in 2017. We are very grateful for all the help you have extended to the organisation. We hope that your December celebrations, if you are celebrating, are wonderful and wish you all the best for the coming year.

Best Wishes,  

Su

September is here and I can't quite believe 8 months have passed since January 1st - the year is going so quickly. This term we are sending children back to school for the last stretch before their end of year exams, and for those coming to the end of their primary or secondary schooling - national examinations. It will be a turbulent term as the schools will need to close for a couple of weeks if a second election goes ahead (the results of the most recent one were annulled last week). That will mean a delay for the exams. It was lovely however to see the children going off to school, ready, if a little nervous, for the term ahead. 

We have also seen two of the young men we have supported through education off to university this month. Abel is now in his second year at Egerton University studying a BSc in Agricultural Ecomonics. Jacob was recently accepted to Meru University to do Computer Security and Forensics. The boys are lucky as they both recieved good enough grades in their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education to be able to apply for governmental loans to pay fees, but there are registration fees, accommodation and related costs that must be paid for and the boys need to have access to laptops if they are to meet all the requirements of their courses. We have set up a specific appeal for help to support them through GlobalGiving.

Our work at Birunda Rescue Centre is ongoing. We have recieved a few visitors from overseas over the last two months as mission groups who visit other projects in Kitale have come to see what we do and how we support our children through the reintegration process. One of the aspects of our work that always impresses them is the bio-intensive agriculture training we give to parents who have small plots of land adjoing their houses but have not been able to sustainably meet the needs of their familes. We train them to make the most of their land and provide a starter pack of seeds and other resources to help them diversify their crops and develop thier yields - making them better able to provide food, and income by selling some of what they grow. In this way, the children returning home from Birunda are more likely to stay in school.

Thank you again for all of support of CRK and our work. We are able to do what we do through the support of people like you.

Best Wishes,

Su 

Dear all,

Thank you to everyone who voted for our shortlisted image in the GlobalGiving photo contest. We didn’t win, but we did receive a number of votes and came quite far up the list. We very much appreciate all of your support!

It has been very busy here in Kitale. Last week we hosted Sander Degeling from the organisation Mobile School, a Belgian organisation that develop mobile school carts and train street-based social workers to deliver education. Their motto is 'If a child cannot come to school, we will bring the school to the child'. Their mobile school design is a portable classroom that can be wheeled out to deliver lessons on the streets and dump sites where the children spend their time. As well as delivering education, it is also a means of developing our relationships with the young people we support, and helping them to start the process of leaving the streets.

Sander came for a pre-visit, to find out more about CRK, to visit the projects, and to explore the streets of Kitale and meet the young people we work with. In addition, Sander delivered a number of training workshops for our staff. These were really interesting as they helped the social workers and teachers to reflect on their own individual identities and attitudes, and how they view the children and young people that we work with. This helps them to be more creative and resourceful when delivering the interventions we develop.

We are at the beginning of building a relationship with Mobile School and hope that we will work together more in the future. The picture above is one of Sander’s. It was taken during a night street walk that our social work team took him on during the visit.

We are also working hard to address the problems of food shortages and related increases in food costs in Kenya at the moment. A bag of maize (one of the most important staples in Kenyan cooking) has gone from kshs3500 to kshs6000 in the past 3 months. That is almost a 100% increase in cost. Sugar, cooking oil/fat, and beans have also increased significantly in price. This is having an impact on the number of children that we will be able to support in the coming months – which is especially concerning as the coming election may result in further instability. Such instability is likely to lead to increased numbers of children needing our help but increased food shortages and panic buying are making it difficult to find staple foods in the market place. 

We have been looking at how we can meet the shortfall: we would like to conduct a bulk buying exercise as soon as possible, not only get better prices but to ensure we we have adequate supplies during any crisis caused by the election result. As a supporter of Child Rescue Kenya, would you be able to help us meet these rising costs?

Thank you again for all your support of CRK and our work in Kitale.

Best Wishes,

Su