At-Risk Youth Education Sponsorship Program

This is our ninth report , As you know, Les Enfants de Dieu (EDD) is a Non-Governmental Organization working in Rwanda. It is a centre which was started in 2002 with the mission of helping street kids.  we value more the support of visitors, partners and donors who have supported us with great generosity over many years, providing us with financial support or coming to visit us and spending time working with the boys. In all of these different ways, your initiatives have brought positive impacts and innumerable benefits to our boys.

The children also deeply appreciate all the different forms of help they receive, and the kindness of the friends and the strangers who support the centre makes a significant difference to their lives. This way, therefore is our news channel for their voices too, and is intended to update you about our activities and also to remind you how much we appreciate the love and consideration you show our boys.

Ministry team’s participation,

DD Ministers who are voted in every year by the boys themselves and the staff. There are 7 Ministers, each of whom has one Director General and two Technicians to back them in the work of each Ministry.  Each of the elected ministers and their teams carry responsibility for a particular area of work, together with the staff link person  with whom they collaborate. This Ministry system is a marvelous way to teach the boys about child participation, as well as giving them the opportunity to learn leadership skills. It also assures transparency in all the work we are doing at the Centre. At the beginning of this year, in January 2018, the children’s government was in place and ready to assume their roles, following the elections at the end of 2017. This Ministry system aims to improve the capacity of the boys to be involved in all the activities of the centre, from daily up keep to external events. All initiatives have to be approved by everyone in the relevant Ministry, and their signatures are needed to authorize the activity. In this way, all the Ministry teams have played a significant role in the daily management of the program, and without their involvement the ongoing work would have been almost impossible.  We would therefore like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the contribution made by all the Ministry teams in this first quarterly of 2018.

Education:

Education is one of the biggest programmes and is a main pillar of Les Enfants de Dieu services to the former street kids, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is remarkable that 100% of these children and young men attend school even though they are often significantly older than their classmates, as a consequence of the years spent on the streets or in families who were unable to send them to school. Here at EDD we enable them to overcome these obstacles, so that they can regain their access to education, achieve their full potential and participate fully in the future generation. At this point in time we are supporting more children in education than ever before, and we congratulate all our EDD families, friends and supporters on schooling 284 students at all levels of education (193 in Primary, 56 in Secondary, 24 in Vocational training and 11 at university). EDD has paid school fees, provided school materials and paid for transport for kids from families who cannot afford these educational overheads, but we are only able to pay the registration fees for university students. At the EDD centre, new and young children access Primary 1 & 2 level education and the list incluide children who are in our rehabilitation programs.

Sport, games, culture, arts and dance activities  

All these extra-curricular activities are powerful tools in changing the kids’ manners and habits from ‘street style’ to socially acceptable, and in helping them to reorient themselves from hopeless to hopeful, from selfish to team working, from careless to creative. All of these values they acquire and more besides, help them to fit back into their families and society. So thank you again to all those people who support in this sometimes invisible but very meaningful areas of our work!   

This year we have received many very young kids, who cannot spend as long at the centre as previously was the case, but it is still amazing to see how quickly they are able to acquire skills before we reintegrate them back into their families. Furthermore, many of the kids keep coming back to the centre after their reintegration to continue their sports and cultural training!

Health and wellbeing

Les Enfants de Dieu hosted 102 kids at the centre in this first quarter of 2018.  We undertook to establish the health status of all the children, so all were tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.  One child had contracted HIV from a parent but otherwise we were delighted to find no other cases, as we are well aware that the children are vulnerable while living on the streets. Other common problems which appeared over this period were malaria, parasites, skin infections and some low level conditions which were all well managed and treated.

Since end of January, Les Enfants de Dieu has recruited about 6 boys from the streets in addition to the 111 kids we had in the beginning of January. those months we recruited a less number of new kids as we did a big recruitment early in January . After recruitment Social workers, the Counselor, teachers and the rest of the team started a rehabilitation process which focused on orientation, trainings, emotional healing and gathering all the necessary information for identification and family tracing. After this we begin the process of family visits, and in this quarter we have made 31 visits around the country. EDD also provided all the children with their basic needs, including three meals a day, clothes, shoes, and hygiene products to give them a comfortable and secure life during their time with us.

Reintegration

Early in April we reintegrated 14 kids back into their families but after we are going to progress more by visiting the families and settled back in school near the families.

One boy’s story

Here is the story of one of our boys, transcribed from his own words: 

I am Jack and I am 17years old. Before my mum passed away she was a hard working woman, and when I was young I lived with her and my father. My father was extremely abusive and battered my mother frequently until she fled the country with me and my young brother for fear of being killed. We went to Uganda, and while we were there my father sold all the property we had in Rwanda and followed us to Uganda. He came to live near our new house which our mother had bought from a small business she was doing. One night my father came into our house and killed my mother, so that in the morning we found our mother on the ground but we were too young to know what had happened – we thought she was sleeping. Neighbours called her after seeing a man they didn’t know as she had told them about the husband she had run away from. After that it was a long story – our father was jailed in Uganda and we were brought back to Rwanda by mum’s family who forced their way into the house to find she was dead. However they mistreated us badly because our father had killed their daughter so we were sent to live with our grandmother, our father’s mother! Then our father escaped from jail in Uganda and joined us in Rwanda! I was so afraid of him that I ran way to Kigali, and found myself living on the street and trying to find food in dustbins and anywhere else!

By luck I was told about EDD and so I went to National Commission for Children to ask for help and to be sent to Les Enfants de Dieu. Here I am in a safe place where my father will not find me and where he can’t hurt me.

I started school again and have reached Primary 4. I am happy to be able to study and also with the help of the counselor, I no longer feel the need to seek revenge and kill my father as I used to plan to do.  I am grown up and mature now, and I am no longer afraid of him! I thank Les Enfants de Dieu so much and everyone who has helped me here.”

Our sustainability projects:

Agriculture is one of the sustainable programmers EDD started at the end of 2016 and we have harvested about 1220 kilograms of beans, 250 kilos of bananas and other more vegetables to supplement the diet of Les Enfants de Dieu children before we supply local markets. We are expecting to produce food to cover up to 30% of our nutritional costs this year, and even more in future. In addition, we have another agricultural activity which we anticipate will be a source of income in the future for EDD, and which will help to reduce the high costs we are incurring today. This means that in the short term we hope to become self reliant in the production of food for the boys, and in the long term we may be able to generate income from surplus production. We are confident and excited about this prospect! One nice example of this is the banana plantation we now have, which we hope will reduce our expenses by at least 30%  in the years to come.

Art gallery

Les Enfants de Dieu initiated a program of teaching the boys art and painting, and afterwards selling their handiwork: out of the money raised, 60% contributes to les Enfants de Dieu’s costs and 40% goes to the young artist to help motivate the child to continue to develop his skills. This programs has been going well and has proved to be a nice source of the revenue for EDD and for the child. Yet again these are great skills which more and more kids are able to take back into their family. Within three months alone EDD made almost 500USD from the sale of these paintings, and that with only limited marketing. We hope to develop this area of activity with more publicity and outreach initiatives in the months to come. One artist, Simon, said “I wasn’t sure about my potential in arts!” Look below at the caliber of work being produced by the EDD artists!

We want to conclude this our report by expressing our huge gratitude to our donors, partners and friends for all the valuable contributions you have made to us as EDD. We still have a long way to go, as we still see many children ending up living on the streets, even if they are usually hidden from daily public view. The numbers keep coming, and of course we know that each one represents a vulnerable and traumatized child and, often behind them, there is a family in crisis.   It is in that spirit that we hope that you will continue to work together with us in transforming the lives of street boys, as you have done before.  We never forget your help even when your collaboration was many years ago – you are always part of the EDD family and are welcome whenever you want to visit or be in touch.