Zambian Street Children
We all know that there are many many poor children in Africa, and that HIV/Aids is a major problem for these children and their families. But did you know just how bad life can be for some of these children is?
Take Zambia for example. Here are a few statistics:
• over 30% of all children under the age of 15 are orphans
• 80% of the people in rural areas live below the poverty line
• half a million young children are living on the streets, with no one to look after them
SOS Children is determined to reduce the hardships of life being suffered by the young of Zambia. In 1999 the charity opened its first community for orphaned children in Lusaka, the capital. Today, nearly 200 boys and girls live together in families in this community. The charity brings them up in a loving and caring environment – so different from the threatening world from which they have been rescued.
But the number of children needing help and support is just so great that SOS Children has also recently established an outreach project aimed specifically at helping the thousands of children that are still condemned to scratching a living from the town’s streets. This project has involved the charity setting up a Social Centre and a Medical Centre.
The Social Centre encourages street children – often as young as six years old – to ‘drop in’. They are provided with food, and information on HIV/Aids, hygiene, health services, education and training. Currently some 800 children are being helped in this way each year.
The Medical Centre gives a full range of health services to about 2000 people every month, and welcomes the many street children that appear at its door. It also helps families already being supported by the Social Centre. The main diseases treated are respiratory infections, malaria and stomach disorders. Voluntary HIV/Aids testing is also available.
In addition to helping the children directly, the Social Centre is currently providing support to families where children might otherwise become street children. There are over a hundred of these families in the poorest communities and they generally have no mothers and fathers, (often from HIV/Aids), so that responsibility for child care rests with older children (perhaps themselves as young as eight) or grandparents – or nobody. So far the project has helped over 300 children to return to school, and vocational training is also being provided to older children.
Although SOS has helped to improve the lives of many Zambian children, the number we have reached so far is still only a tiny fraction of the thousands who need our services.
Home