The HIV/AIDS pandemic has left over 1,000,000 children in Tanzania, one of the
poorest coutries in the world, as orphans.
The government and the major aid agencies take the view that the funds they have to help
orphaned children should be focussed on keeping them within their village communities as this is much cheaper than funding
orphanages and is also in the best interests of the children themselves. Inevitably these funds are limited and are
not sufficient to cover all areas of the country.
A consequence is that there is no money for addressing the needs of children who, for
one reason or another, cannot remain within their communities. The histories of the children at orphanages we support
show that when their parents died they were usually sent to live with relatives but poverty, illness or abuse did not make
this a susatinable solution to their needs. As a consequence they finished up in one of the many orphanages to be found
in the country.
These orphanages
receive no financial support from the government or from the major aid organisations. They do what they can to get
help from their local communities but the great majority, if not all, rely on funding from overseas charities such as Kids
Aid Tanzania.
It is a similar story with street children's
centres. Every large town has a significant number of street children. The causes are many, complex aand related.
They include poverty, illness, death and abuse within the family which leads to children running away from their parents
or carers to what they see as a better life in the town. Most are boys, but a few are girls. They finish
up living on the streets and survive by begging, raiding dustbins for food, petty crime and, sometines prostitution.
Street children's centres employ staff to seek out
these children and provide them with accommodation and food whilst trying to address the problems which caused them to run
away. Their aim is to re-integrate them into their families. If this is not successful then they attempt
to look after them permanently in much the same way as an orphanage.
As
with orphanages, they are mainly dependent on overseas funding for support. The video shows the new stoves we funded
as part of the refurbishment of the kitchen at the Kuleana Street Children's Centre and the delivery of mosquito nets
to the Malimbe Family Home, a long term home for street children who could not be returned to their families.
