Projects - Amaoti Primary Prevention
Project
Work with local communities is a vital part of Street-Wise
work, both in terms of changing attitudes towards street children and
in preventing children leaving home.
This
work takes many forms including training for local community
leaders about parenting and the rights and needs of children,
networking with local businesses and other stakeholders
such as Police, Welfare services, local government and residents to ensure
a collaborative approach.
Talking about the Primary Prevention Program, this is where we try to
cut down the number of children leaving their families
and community to join the hazardous street life. Here follows the programs
that we run in order to keep the children and their families attracted
to their community of origin:
- Soup Kitchen: We feed ± 200 school going children
on Tuesdays and Thursdays and different donors give towards this.
- Play and educational centre: 77 children come in
daily as part of this programme and 4 qualified teachers are responsible
for this group. Funding is still needed for another Wendy house and
more teachers.
- Youth Programme: Soccer and Netball teams made up
of community children practice weekly. Holiday programs are also conducted
for school going youth.
- Training: Also provided in the centre is skills training
for members of the family whose children are at risk leaving for the
street due to poverty and unemployment. The following are the skills
offered:
- Sewing and Beadwork
- Bread making and Gardening
Projects - Outreach Team
The
Child Care staff regularly go esout onto the streets to locate street
children. They will visit the children on the streets building their trust,
taking them food and clothing and attending to their basic health needs.
As the relationship develops the workers will try and find out where the
child is from and why they left home. The children are referred to the
shelter where appropriate. If at all possible families are traced and
work is done to reconcile the child with their family.
This is the Outreach part of our work and the Team works directly
on the streets - meeting the children as they arrive on the streets,
find out why they are there and help them make informed decisions
and choose alternative living - bacl home or if that is not directly possible
- in the shelter. The basic factor of this work is relationship.
The Team works on forming relationships of trust with
the children which makes it possible for them to come forward with their
problems, issues and whatever may be going on in.
One of the boys said «life is not perfect at home, sometimes
we don’t even know where the next meal will come from but I’m
happy here and cannot think of anything that will take me back to the
streets».
Listening to their stories is what keeps this team going.
It’s so easy to think that the work done is not enough (and may
never be), to think that we are not making a difference but with these
stories and support from each other and from friends and families we live
to see another day and open our arms (and hearts) to one more child.
Projects - Rehabilitation Shelter
in Marianhill
Street-Wise Durban runs a shelter housing up to 40
children at any one time. This allows for longer term assessment
of children who can not be returned home easily. Shelter placements are
short-term (up to one year) whilst work is undertaken
with the child and the family to find ways of reconciling them.
In exceptional circumstances where
there is a very difficult family relationship or no family then boys will
be referred.
At Street-Wise Durban the children are reintroduced to routine
and stability. The children are expected to help with
daily household tasks and are given support with school work and taken
on trips and outings at the weekends.
Programs of counseling the children and life skills are also run to help
prepare the children for life back with their family.
Every child placed at the centre is also placed into formal education
as soon as possible, with the cost of fees, uniforms etc. being met by
Street-Wise.
Projects - After Care
After Care programs play an important role in stabilizing the
reconciliation of children with their families. Follow-up
visits to the family are conducted and further counseling is
provided where necessary.
The
Aftercare program are the services that are provided to the children who
have gone through the Street Wise program and have
been reconciled with their families. The services that are offered
include:
- School liaison: monitoring the children at school
and home. ·food parcels and paying of school fees
- Material support:For those families that are relatively
poor other services offered include providing uniforms,
- Networking: Linking families with community based
resources and educate them about Social Assistance Grants as to how
to access them.
- Advocacy. Currently there are 26 children in the
Street Wise Durban Aftercare program. Starter fund is given to families
who have shown strength in running income generating activities. A exploratory
research was conducted between 2002-2003 which discovered that our clients
are quiete happy with our aftercare programs, however it needs more
material support & rewards for boys who remains at home for 3 years
and more and more social meetings which requires more money.
Projects - Sbusisiwe Half-Way House
 Street-Wise
as an organization that seeks to care, protect, empower children/young
persons on/of the street and their families, saw a need to incorporate
the above mentioned project. This is an important component
of Street-Wise continuum of care programme. This project enables young
persons whose reconciliation process was unsuccessful due to various reasons
(including death, illness of parents/caregivers and or can not be traced),
to develop necessary skills towards independent living.
The above pictures show us the exterior of the Sibusisiwe Half-Way
House. All the boys at the project are schooling at the local
higher primaries. Sibusisiwe Half-Way house is situated in Botha's
Hill which is in the West of Durban within the Valley of a Thousand
Hills.
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