What We do

Renewed commitment to Africa’s children

Established in the spring of 2006, the fund has declared its mission to give every African child the opportunity to:

  1. learn and receive an education
  2. receive equality and justice and live without fear
  3. live in a society at peace
  4. be given a voice; be heard & listened to; have their opinions respected; their concerns addressed

amongst our values are: -

  1. Equality for all
  2. Respect
  3. Honesty
  4. Tranparency
  5. Openness
  6. Understanding
  7. Tolerance

The fund is presently striving to address these issues in: -

  1. Kenya
  2. Tanzania
  3. Uganda
  4. Zimbabwe

In each country we are approaching these four issues in a manner that responds to local needs and advice from our partners on the ground.

Select a country below to read more about what we are doing on the ground:

Kenya

Our major focus of our efforts at this time is to enable every child gain access to primary education. When President Kibake and his new government came to power in 2002 one of their first actions was to reintroduce free primary education for all.

Sadly this noble gesture, in line with the millennium goals, was not supported with funding to provide children with basic nutrition. It soon became clear that a hungry child cannot learn, children soon deserted the schools to return to the streets to earn ‘their daily bread’.

We were advised that positive intervention to support children would be for us to provide schools with funding so that they could provide the most needy children with daily food. This scheme started in one school in Thika and has now expanded to six with other schools clambering to join. Rather than try and do this alone we have been instrumental in establishing a consortium of individuals and groups with an interest in education which has now been registered under the name of Hazina Kenya.

The aim of Hazina Kenya is within 4 years to be feeding 40.000 children with two meals a day 365 days a year. It is a massive undertaking but we believe we have a plan to make it achievable, when successful the plan will have a very significant and lasting impact on poverty in Kenya.

Tanzania

Our focus is Street Children; we are working with a locally registered organisation in Tanzania called Action for Children. The organisation has a three pronged approach to the problem

  1. A residential Home called the Shalom Centre
  2. A micro credit scheme for ‘very poor female head of households
  3. An advocacy and legal awareness programme for Street Children

The starting point for the staff of Action for Children is to engage with children on the streets, to try to understand them and the reasons why they are there. If reunification with the family or the community is immediately possible that is what the social workers will try to arrange, but if it is not shelter will be offered to the child at the centre.

Most children at the centre are between 6 and 13, but some have been accepted as young as 2. The centre presently holds about 62 children of whom 26 are girls. All the children at the centre attend school, either primary or secondary, or attend vocational college. The centre runs a small farm which has just moved to a new plot on which a purpose built centre for the children will be built. Plans are being developed that suggest that there will be nine cottages each providing accommodation for eight children.

There is a scheme being developed at this time to open a ‘Street Children’s Sports Club’ where children whom it is normally difficult to engage can come and play football, at the same time they can access other services which Action for Children will provide.

Uganda

We are currently starting to work in two different areas, with different organisations but addressing many common issues. In the north of the country we are working with the Charity for Peace Foundation (CFPF). This was an initiative of the Anglican Bishop for Northern Uganda, Bishop Nelson, to address the many thousands of children he saw commuting into Gulu each night as they sought the safety of the city’s streets away from the horrors and abductions of the LRA in the resettlement camps. A stopping of the fighting may have occurred in the region and many of the child commuters may now be able to spend the night at their home in the camps, but it is hardly peace, it is still not safe to return to many of the villages.

The CFPF foundation reported that perhaps initially 90% of the children for whom they were providing care have been able to go home, but that still leaves 100 or so se4eeking sanctuary in the centre and the number is slowly rising as children find there is no life for them in the camps, and many of the children released by the LRA have no home to go to. After maybe a lifetime of living in the bush where are they to go, what are they to do? The CFPF Foundation is trying to offer counselling and suitable training, but it is a very difficult task, many of the children run away to find a better and more exciting life and find themselves living on the streets of the Capital Kampala.
On the streets the children, particularly the girls can be very vulnerable and subject to all kinds of exploitation. Althought the government has the ‘right laws in place’ there is seldom anyone to enforce them and children frequently just disappear off the streets. For girls in particular this can be into a life of servitude, rape and sexual abuse. A group has recently been established called SAFE (Strategic Action for the Eradication of Child Abuse). The group aims to target the needs of young children and girls. The first action to be taken in the late summer of 2008 is to appoint an unattached youth worker, to make contact with these children, identify their needs, assess the services presently  available and make recommendations a2s to how SAFE can most effectively become operational.

Zimbabwe

The present situation is very difficult; we have formed a link with the GRJ Church and their Mwana project and are endeavouring to help 5,000 of the most needed children in the Mwana district. What can be achieved is constrained by the Zimbabwean Government’s policy. Obviously we can do nothing illegal or put the volunteers of the GRJ church in any unnecessary danger.

As it becomes possible to report details of what is being done they will be posted here.