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Children - Born into slums

For a child in a slum, life is simply a dull pain. There are few joys, and yet the children one meets in a slum often still smile in spite of. Most of them do not go to school. Even though school might be free, most children and their parents or guardians cannot afford those other things that go along with going to school such as uniforms, books, transport, even the toilet paper and broom a child must bring to school.

A child in a slum will start working at a very young age. Girls will cook, do laundry and there is the danger of being defiled even at a young age. (Young girls as young as 12 have the highest percentage of AIDS. Even the BBC has done a program on that troubling topic.) Boys will fetch the water in a jerry can, assist in cleaning and be in charge of many, some will watch over a brother, others will try to find some kind of work. Life seems like a dead end street.

In the slum, death is all around, AIDS, Malaria, other sicknesses that simple soap and water could eliminate take their toll, many children in a slum never see their sixth birthday. All of this and much more, troubled a Ugandan woman Robinah Lubwama and her husband David Lubwama who daily drove by those very slums and who saw the children suffer. She took a few of them and put them into various schools her organization has, but there were so many more and she did not have the resources to take care of them.

What could they do to show some love, to touch many lives in a meaningful way, to bring hope and healing? How do you identify the needs of children without meeting them? When would these children be free from some of their chores? When would parents and guardians allow them to somewhere?

The light came on and something unique was born - "The Bugolobi Church for Children." From its inception to now, it has grown to now over 500 children. They meet in rented classrooms in a school, four of them in all by age group. Volunteer teachers share with them, listen to them, encourage, touch their hearts and fill them with hope and identify who needs immediate help and care.

They come up the paths from their makeshift shacks both toward Robinah's apartment where they meet under the big mango tree, or they go directly to the school where the church for children meets. The street becomes filled with hundreds of children as they move toward the school. They are dressed in their Sunday finest and that can vary from great to sad. They come to ply, to sing, to listen, to eat and to be simply children once again.

When they arrive they are send to the washroom where they are told, "before and after" and that simple training in hygiene eliminates all kind of potential illnesses. There is also follow up into the homes by a social worker who sits down with parents and or guardians to assess the needs of each child. Teach parents and guardians how to create a place called home even in the slums and give inner dignity to their children.

Their time together is mixed with music, children playing the drums, a time of sharing their concerns and the good things happening to them. There are skits and plays, laughter and play, times of reflection, prayer and encouragement from the workers.

Afterwards, once again off to the washroom and then food is given to the kids and they sit with one another and share, laugh and simply allow that child spirit to be alive in them.

It is the deep desire of everyone of those who give their time every weekend to the children that each child that comes is given an opportunity in life to be who they are meant to be through a meaningful education.

The project has been solely underwritten and paid for by Robinah and her husband David. All the workers are volunteers with the exception of the social worker who has been hired to move the project beyond just being a church on Sunday morning, but something that works all week.

I took an interest in this lovely concept when I was in Uganda for several months earlier this year and my heart was deeply moved and it was about at that time when the non-profit agency I had been working on was given tax-exempt status in the USA named Ambassadors of Hope International working with children in the slums of Uganda, East Africa and even India.

I have told the story of the church for children to many people and many respond and want to do something tangible, something that will touch the life of a child for as long as they live, such as child project. Others want to give to the church project and help with the expenses at hand. If you like to help? Feel free to take a look below and find out how....The reason, I called it a project, is because it involves so much more than the Sunday morning, it involves helping to shape their lives for the better so that they can break out of that which they were born into - the slums

Keabetswe's Story

To escape his grandmother's abuse, Keabetswe lives mostly on the streets and is able to attend school only sporadically. But he knows that the streets are no place for a little boy. Keabetswe's vulnerable nature comes out when he is at Bona Lesedi, a day care centre for orphans which literally means "See Hope" in the Setswana language. At Bona Lesedi Keabetswe leans on Nono Molefe's shoulder, one of the centre's co-directors, and becomes a little boy looking for some attention and a cuddle. And Nono gives it willingly.

Now that Keabetswe has found a place that gives him some hope for a better life, he is glad to stop pretending that he can hack the street life.

"Since the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, the basic needs of many children like Keabetswe have not been met," says Nono. "They need education, love, food and sometimes shelter. We give them clothes, we help them with school work, and they go home just to sleep."

But there are some 2,000 orphans in Kanye alone, and only 200 who come to the centre – a stark illustration of how many more children still need to be reached.

The rising number of orphaned children in Botswana is a direct result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has hit sub-Saharan Africa harder than anywhere else. Over 12 million children in the region have been left without parents and without a childhood as a result of the epidemic.

In Botswana, the country with the second highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world, 15 per cent of all children have been orphaned and, if the present trend of the spread of HIV infection continues, an unprecedented number of children will be left without parents and traditional caring mechanisms will soon be unable to cope.

These days, for children like Keabetswe, attention centers like Bona Lesedi are the only hope for a better future.

Ali's Story

For Ali, working long hours every day has not just meant less time to play and be a teenager. It has literally endangered his health: two years ago he nearly lost his hand when he dozed off grinding chickpeas. Luckily, he was rushed to the hospital and his hand was salvaged.

The situation of the 17,000 people living in Souf is bleak. Job opportunities are limited, and most refugees take on temporary jobs in neighboring farms picking olives and working the land. For the 3,400 teenagers in the camp there are few places to meet and socialize and fewer prospects. Boys and girls rarely mix and many girls marry before they turn 18.

So when a project designed to teach teenage boys and girls about filming, editing and scriptwriting was launched at Souf Camp to encourage self expression and youth participation, it was greeted with much enthusiasm.

"This has been an eye opener for the kids," says project director Bashar Sharaf. "Because they are used to rote learning in their schools, they found it difficult at first to express themselves and speak to the other sex, but they soon overcame their shyness, and spoke freely about issues which concerned them.

"The participants began by brainstorming on what would be a good topic for their film. In the end, they decided to make a film featuring the plight of children who have to work to support their families and chose Ali as the main character.

Once the theme was chosen, the youths started writing the script, and then worked on capturing images of life in the camp, editing and translation.

"This documentary is a personal scream. We wanted to reach out, make people living outside the camps know what our lives are like," says Ali. "It's tough, but what's even tougher is having young people my age pass by and stare because I am not doing the same things that they are doing."

Ali is one of the more than 40,000 working children between 7 and 18 years old who live in Jordan. Worldwide, an estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labor. Nearly 70 per cent of these children work in hazardous conditions, including working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or with dangerous machinery. Although they are everywhere, they mostly remain invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, working behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in factories.

Special Thank You(s)!

We would like to thank the following for their support:
Crystal Pippins

Your donations are a big factor in this campaign!

The three most important challenges and opportunities for the decade ahead

1. Jobs:
Throughout the developing world, productive-employment-intensive growth remains a challenge. In Africa, it is almost a crisis, with most of the labor force working in low-productivity, informal-sector jobs, and 7-10 million young people entering the labor force every year. That the unemployment rate in South Africa—the continent’s largest economy—has remained around 25 percent is particularly troubling.
2. Fragile states:
One group of African countries—numbering 20 at last count—are missing out on development because of conflict, war or serious governance problems. Even more disturbing is the fact that these countries have remained fragile states for a long time: The probability that a fragile state in 2000 was still fragile in 2008 is 0.96. The development community needs to rethink its approach to these countries.
3. Politics and pro-poor reforms:
After one or two decades of multi-party democracy in some countries and the increased voice of domestic civil society (thanks partly to the information revolution), the climate for pro-poor reforms in Africa is improving. Note the almost total absence of populist (and ultimately anti-poor) policies such as price and exchange rate controls in response to the food, fuel and financial crises of the past two years. As policymakers are increasingly being held accountable by the people—the majority of whom are poor—there is a better chance that they will take decisions that benefit the poor.

Starting The Year Out Right!

Special Thank You(s)!

We would like to thank the following for there support:
Micheal Lawson
Phillip Davis

Your donations are a big factor in this campaign!