Friends of the Street Children

Well, Week 3 of my time in Zambia has arrived and I've had to remove myself from the nice routine I was getting into with my work at Ubumi Project Africa, and move on to the next phase of my voluntary time here. For the next few weeks I will be working with another organization here in Zambia: Friends of the Street Children (FoSC).

FoSC is an organization that was started in 2001 by a group of people in the city of Kitwe that were concerned by the growing problem of young children living on the streets. Prior to the organization being started this group of concerned Zambians worked on their own, providing support to those they met on the street by counseling and even taking them into their own homes. The organization started out of this grass-roots concern and since its inception has helped over 1,000 street children in a variety of ways.

The organization has 3 main branches:

1. Street outreach to build relationships with those on the street and to offer education support, counseling and medical support. On my first day, I was taken out into central Kitwe on foot with 2 of the social workers.

It only took a few minutes before we came into contact with a number of children in dirty clothes - all of them recognized the social workers and came up to greet us. They are anywhere from 8 to 18 years old and were all either begging, or doing some sort of remedial "jobs" such as helping direct traffic in a parking lot, leading blind people through town, or selling small trinkets. One of the things I first noticed was that almost every one seemed to be carrying around what looked like an empty bottle. I soon learned that these bottles held what is most dear to the majority of these children - a sniffing mixture of petrol and glue. Later on this walkabout we encountered numerous children who were high, as well as others that were so far gone that they had passed out on the street.

2. Rehabilitation, in which children who agree, are taken off the street and placed in one of the organizations care homes. These children are sent to school, attend weekly church services, receive counseling, and are fed and clothed by the organization. FoSC has 3 care homes - 1 for girls which is holding 9 currently, and 2 for boys which is currently holding 17, although it seems that this week 2 ran away to return to the streets - they can not resist the freedom they have on the street or the addiction to drugs and the small amounts of money they can earn.

I visited all 3 of the homes on Monday and Tuesday and it is amazing to see the transformations in some of these kids. Some of them told stories of beatings, rape, and being forced into the sex trade that were just awful. On the good side - the kids seem truly happy in these 3 care centres and have lots of space for sports and recreation, and even a school and teacher onsite for those kids that need extra help before they can be placed into the public school system.



3. Reintegration, where the organization works to find the families of these children and where possible, places them either back with the parents or with another responsible family member after the environment has been deemed safe for the child.

Currently there are around 100 children living on the streets in Kitwe. Unfortunately, funding of the organization has fallen so low recently (due to the economic crunch) that they are in danger of closing, can not afford to fill the space they have in the care homes (there is capacity for 25 girls and 30 boys), and are not even able to pay some staff salaries. Fortunately, the staff are so dedicated to this cause that they are still working without pay in order to ensure that they can help as many children as possible.

My role here is to help the accounts officer get the 2011/2012 accounts up and running for the new fiscal year, but mostly I will be looking for new possible sources of funding for the organization and preparing some proposals for them. I think this is the week where the rubber really meets the road for me - the type of work that is done here is definitely more intense and the things I have seen and heard in the past week have really been causing some stress on my mind and emotions! Luckily for me (maybe not so lucky for him!) I've got a good friend close by who has been the target of some very stressed text messages - that has helped me out a lot.

Stay tuned....

My Introduction to Ubumi Project Africa

On my first Sunday in Zambia, my homestay family and I went for a drive through Kitwe and made a quick stop in at the first organization that I would be working with while here. Ubumi is an organization that runs 3 operations: a community school with 387 kids in grades 1-7, a nutrition program with 30 malnourished children who are provided with food and come in once a week with their mothers for training and a cooked meal, and the Ubumi transit home. The office for the organization is in the transit home.

There are 9 children aged 5-16 housed at the transit home – all of them are orphans and they live here with a caretaker as well as a cook/cleaner that comes in during the day but does not stay overnight. The kids are placed here by the Social Welfare branch of the government and Ubumi works to try and find relatives of these children who will take them in. Most of the kids have been here for years and either have no relatives that Ubumi can find, or none that are willing to take them in.


me with Mapalo, John, Juliet, Dominic & Frank

When I first got out of the car the 9 most excited kids that I have ever seen surrounded me. Apparently they had been told weeks in advance that I would be coming and immediately were addressing me as “Uncle Jordan”! The kids were so happy to see a new face and immediately got to work trying to find out as much information about me as possible – that is until they saw I was carrying a camera. This turned into a daily routine where they would run up to me, greet me and then immediately start asking if they could take a picture with my camera (you’ll know these by the pics on facebook that have people’s heads cut off or that are focused on a random tree rather than the people in the picture!).


I’ll be doing a variety of finance related work including helping get the organization all caught up on their bookkeeping and recording of donations and expenses, helping them design financial reports that will be useful to them, and recommending some policies and procedures that will help make things run easier and more smoothly. I will also be helping out with the narrative reports that need to be sent to their donors, and will be on their organizing committee for a new fundraising effort – a golf tournament. In addition to all this, I get a few hours a day to spend with the kids.

The first week of work has gone really well – the project officer Veronica and me have gotten on really well and I think she enjoys having someone with her in the office during the day! She was gone a few days for some meetings, and this brought to me the new and terrifying reality of driving myself to work in Zambia! The roads are absolutely awful, I’m driving a right-hand drive vehicle, and the other drivers are ridiculous – it took me a few days to get over it, and now I am thoroughly enjoying the drives.

It’s been very humbling to see how little money the transit home can survive on – and how happy the 9 kids are that they have a safe place to live, three meals a day, and don’t have to worry about paying school fees or getting money for books and uniforms. I felt a lot like a parent when one day I got to drive all 9 to school and then went in with two of them to get their report cards and speak with their teachers about performance! One of our nine kids, in grade one, was ranked #1 in his class, which was pretty cool.

Just to give you an example of how desperate people are in some areas – yesterday Veronica and I went down to where the nutrition program takes place to see how things were going. Immediately upon our arrival, we could tell something wasn’t right and soon realized that they had run out of a key ingredient for the breakfast that is served to the malnourished kids. Unfortunately, due to lack of funding, there was no way to pay for it and these 30 kids and their moms were going to leave with no food. Just before we left, I asked if I could just pay for it and run to a store to pick it up. We walked through the community (called the Musonda compound) to a store and passed dozens of small, malnourished (a few with very swollen bellies) children on the way, which was tough. When we got to the store and I went to pay I was just shocked that 30 kids were going to go without breakfast for a day because they couldn’t come up with this money. How much was it going to cost to feed these kids you ask? Less than $3 (and no, this is not a typo)...

Well, I made it!

So after what seemed liked waiting forever, the day of my journey to Zambia has come and gone. Things went pretty well, and I discovered that a couple of well-timed drowsy allergy pills could make a world of difference! I ended up sleeping a good 7 hours of the 11 hour flight from London to Lusaka. Steve and I arrived around 6AM and had a little bit of trouble deciding if we wanted to step off that last stair coming off the airplane, or turn around and strap ourselves in for the flight back to Heathrow!

Luckily we were met at the airport by one of the staff member of the organization Steve came to help (Restless Development) and he was able to give me a ride as far as Kabwe. The first thing I noticed was the state of the roads in Zambia – they put the potholes in Winnipeg to shame! Secondly was the sheer number of people that you see outdoors walking. There are loads and loads of people that walk to and from work and school, from inside the city all the way out to along the highways.

Once in Kabwe we got a good introduction to some interesting business practices here. We walked into a bank to change some of our USD into Zambian Kwache, and to our surprise, the banks don’t change money on the weekend. But lucky for us, the bank manager had a friend sitting with him that could change our money from his personal stash of cash – just had to wait a few minutes for this guy to go out, collect the money, and come back to the bank. You will all be happy to know that I am almost a millionaire – I was able to trade $200 US for 920,000 Kwache. We are positive we got ripped off, and that the guy was coming back to the bank on Monday with our USD to make a quick profit!! Oh well, we got what we came for.

Next (after a teary-eyed goodbye with Stevie of course - hahaha) I got a first hand experience of the wonderful ‘Euro-Africa Bus’ line which I had to ride for 3 hours to get to my final destination, Kitwe. The bus was actually not too uncomfortable, just packed full and I had to jam all my luggage at my feet leaving no room to put them down. We made a few stops on the way which were highlighted by hoards of street sellers coming on and walking up and down the aisle with drinks, an assortment of food/candy, and a fine selection of knock-off sunglasses, leather items, DVD’s (I’m sure not illegally copied!) and of course, christian CD’s!

Upon arrival in Kitwe I was met by Charlene & Andrew (the family that I would be staying with for the next 6 weeks) and was very happy to discover that they are great which calmed my nerves a lot! We had a quick bite at a pizza shop and then headed to my new home in Ndeke village on the suburbs of Kitwe. I was quite concerned when we turned off onto a series of unkempt dirt roads and drove by a ton of the types of houses that you see on the World-Vision commercials. Fortunately, the house I am staying in is really nice and has everything I could ever need (including a live-in nanny for their kids that surprised me by coming in and cleaning up after me while I was out!).

I was quickly introduced to the Zambian staple food called Nshima which is basically a paste that is made from corn-meal and water cooked together. It is cooked until it looks kind of like a sticky-bun, and then you eat it with your hands and combine it with whatever meat you are eating (chicken, fish, etc.) as well as a delicious mixture of cooked vegetables in sauce. Although extremely simple, I have to say that it is amazing – think I may start making it when I get home!

Stay tuned for my next update!

Almost that time!

Well - only 5 days left until I finally get on that amazing 11 hour BA flight from London to Lusaka, and so will begin my first trip to Africa. 5 days is being optimistic of course, as I hear that it's quite difficult to get into Zambia without a passport! Here's hoping that the UK Consulate in NYC can finish processing my UK work visa and have it back to me in time to make the flight.

For all of you out there that don't know why I am going - here's the low down: I have decided to take the 2 months I have off between my time working in Bermuda, and moving to the UK and to use it to do some volunteer work in Africa. I went through an organization in London called Accounting for International Development http://www.afid.org.uk and they set me up with 2 organizations in Kitwe, Zambia. Basically I will be going down to do help these organizations out with their accounting, finance and a few other things. The two charities I will be helping are:

1) Ubumi Project Africa which is a Zambian organization with the fundamental goal of improving the lives of children suffering as a result of HIV and AIDS. Ubumi exists to provide quality care and support to households living with orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC), prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS among children, alleviate poverty and strengthen community response through sensitization and empowerment.

2) Friends of the Street Children which aims to change perceptions of street children, working to find long term solutions; providing refuges, high quality street-based services and offering much-needed friendship, guidance and support. One of FSC’s great successes has been their work delivering education to children on the street. In 2007 alone, 144 students attended street corner classes and over half went on to further education or training.

I will be flying down to Zambia with my good pal Steve who is doing similar work for an organization in Kabwe, Zambia. You can see his blog and updates at http://steveisinzambia.wordpress.com. Both of us will be in Zambia for 6 weeks and then will be heading down to do some traveling in South Africa, visit friends in Jo'burg and then ending up in Cape Town.

Stay tuned in for more updates!