STREET KIDS RESCUE
A government report in 2001 claimed there were 7000 street children in Rwanda, most living in Kigali. Children orphaned through the genocide have been joined by an ever increasing stream of aids orphans. Those children are vulnerable to poverty, hunger, violence and prostitution. At present the government has been rounding up those children and keeping them in under-funded centres where there have been reports of death through malnutrition and abuse by those in authority. In turn, many of the children turn to crime, theft and violence to scrape a living on the streets.
Our partners in Rwanda, The Living Church, has developed a project to tackle this problem by providing 70 street children with food, clothing, health, education and Christian training. The project is wholly funded by Comfort Rwanda and costs £20 per child per month.
Reports from the project are encouraging. Some children who have families have been reconciled and gone back to the family home and, if the family has been too poor to provide for the child, support from the project is given. 90% of the children have started attending school and because of the support of the dedicated project workers nearly all of them are in the top quarter of their classes now. One of them even has an ambition to be Rwanda’s president! These street children have renamed themselves “The Friends of Jesus” and formed a choir and traditional dance group. “We are no longer street children” they say “but we have become friends of Jesus”.
A government report in 2001 claimed there were 7000 street children in Rwanda, most living in Kigali. Children orphaned through the genocide have been joined by an ever increasing stream of aids orphans. Those children are vulnerable to poverty, hunger, violence and prostitution. At present the government has been rounding up those children and keeping them in under-funded centres where there have been reports of death through malnutrition and abuse by those in authority. In turn, many of the children turn to crime, theft and violence to scrape a living on the streets.
Our partners in Rwanda, The Living Church, has developed a project to tackle this problem by providing 70 street children with food, clothing, health, education and Christian training. The project is wholly funded by Comfort Rwanda and costs £20 per child per month.
Reports from the project are encouraging. Some children who have families have been reconciled and gone back to the family home and, if the family has been too poor to provide for the child, support from the project is given. 90% of the children have started attending school and because of the support of the dedicated project workers nearly all of them are in the top quarter of their classes now. One of them even has an ambition to be Rwanda’s president! These street children have renamed themselves “The Friends of Jesus” and formed a choir and traditional dance group. “We are no longer street children” they say “but we have become friends of Jesus”.
The challenge now is to develop vocational training facilities for the children who are ready to move on and build their new life. A bakery has been set up which is providing work and income for some of the rescued children and a metal-work workshop is planned.
Larger facilities are also needed to enable the church to take on more of the street children, some of whom are sleeping in holes in river banks. To this end some land has been purchased for the Ihumure Vocational Training Centre (Skills for Life) on the outskirts of Kigali. Visit our APPEALS page on this project.
Larger facilities are also needed to enable the church to take on more of the street children, some of whom are sleeping in holes in river banks. To this end some land has been purchased for the Ihumure Vocational Training Centre (Skills for Life) on the outskirts of Kigali. Visit our APPEALS page on this project.
