All My Children

The brief overview of the projects caring for street children in the cities may have made some of us living in the towns rather envious! How fortunate city people are to have so many human resources at their disposal: social workers, psychologists, child care workers, as well as various supporting agencies such as drug counselling centres, etc, to come to their assistance. While this is indeed the case, it is important to bear in mind that street children projects in the cities also have difficulties that are not found in the towns. For instance:

• the geographical extent (size) of the city makes it difficult for a project to reach the street children;
• the number of children is high because of the many possibilities of employment within the city itself;
• 
• many of the children come from remote rural areas hoping to ‘find gold’ in the cities; thus contact with their families is difficult because of distances, etc, and after-care also becomes problematic;
• the phenomenon of street children has been in existence for a longer time in the cities and many more children are streetwise (experienced on the street) than in the towns;
• the number of children and the size of the city often demands the establishment of a physical structure (drop-in centre) in order to reach them;
• the sheer number of children may make personal contacts, and especially after-care, extremely difficult.

The above are some of the difficulties with which street children projects in the cities must cope. This is not the case, however, in the towns. As a result, while it may be tempting for towns to ‘copy’ what is being done in the cities to care for street children, it is important to realise that the two situations are not identical in every way. Thus, the way of reaching children in the towns, of necessity, must differ from the way they are reached in the cities. Towns need to assess their own situation very carefully before embarking on or implementing models that could be detrimental to the welfare of the children they wish to care for.

Because the geographical size of a town is limited, the number of street children will also be limited, varying from a few children to about a hundred or so. Because towns have few supermarkets, taxi stands, parking areas and other places where street children can do business, it is possible to reach and make contact with them wherever they are. Because towns generally do not attract children from far away, contact with the children’s families and their after-care is much easier to handle. Another advantage is that the infrastructure needed to reach and care for street children in the cities is not essential to reach the children in towns; facilities such as drop-in shelters, night shelters, feeding schemes and so on are usually not necessary.

The last of this reports the experience of the White River Help Our Children Project‘, a sub-committee of the Moses Sihlangu Health Care Centre. This project is described to the people in the hope that it might help them to become involved with street children in their own situation.

While the project does not claim to have found the magic solution, it believes that with a lot of good will and very little finance, it is possible to take care of street children and to help them become the leaders of tomorrow. From its limited experience, a good number of the street children for whom the project has cared are of above average intelligence, and have much to offer for the good of our country.

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