1. The Context

The experience of the past year has shown again that children who get stranded in town are indicators of problems of the communities they are coming from. It is only those who are strong enough and who have enough courage and initiative, who make it to the streets. They are like a highly visible, yet tiny tip of a huge iceberg. The vast majority of suffering children suffer invisibly and silently in townships and villages.
In a context where the majority of people live already in abject poverty, the extended families and communities are even more overstretched because of the exploding number of orphans who need care. Many orphans are traumatized through the experience of witnessing the sickness and death of their parents, siblings and relatives. Often these children are judged to be difficult, they are punished for their ‘bad behaviour’ or suspected to be witches.
      Some people abuse the vulnerability of orphans by grabbing their property, by overworking them, depriving them of food, beating or sexually abusing them.
Unstable marriages of the parents, step-families, alcoholism, and the violence which these situations produce, are further sources of devastating suffering for many children.

Children having breakfast at Tikondane

2. Tikondane’s role

When Tikondane started in 1998, our target-group was those children who spent not only their days but also their nights in town. For some years now our focus has shifted more and more towards newcomers in town, including mothers whose children are in danger. This approach of ‘providing a last safety-net’ for children who are in danger of being exposed to and absorbed into street-life has continued to characterize our work during the past year. It involves identifying and welcoming newcomers, offering them a safe transit shelter, facilitating legal assistance if necessary, and reintegrating them into their homes with special attention to school-opportunities. To keep reintegrated children at home, regular follow up visits are needed in a number of cases.
Many people have a certain awareness about child-rights. But there are very few opportunities for children to actually access ‘hand on assistance’ for their needs or for claiming and defending their rights. Tikondane sees its role in protecting children and offering them concrete help for claiming and defending their rights. Tikondane has become known for thoroughly investigating the situation of each child/family and for working with determination to follow issues through.
One child-right that is much talked about is the Right of Protection from Work that Threatens Children’s Health, Education and Development. Yet many of Tikondane’s children have escaped exploitive working conditions, mainly from private households or family farms. Children working there are less protected than those in estates where labour unions have at least some influence.   

1. One example is the story of the 11 year old orphan girl Madalitso. She had stayed with her poor grandmother in her village in a mountainous area of Dedza district which is known for ‘child-labour export’. Farmers from more prosperous areas of the country would go there to recruit boys to work on their fields or to heard their cattle and goats. Working women from town – at times more or less distant relatives – use to go to this area to find girl-servants for their house-work and for keeping their small children in town. One day  a distant  aunt of Madalitso came to the village. She offered to take the girl to town and send her to school. The agreement was that after school, Madalitso would help her in doing the housework. The grandmother agreed willingly, thinking that the girl would have the chance of attending school in town. However, when reaching at the aunt’s home in Lilongwe, the girl was not allowed to go to school, but given much housework to do. She also received very rough treatment whenever she did not perform up to the expectations of the aunt. Homesick and hurt, the girl ran away. She was picked up by the Police at a roadblock as she was walking  towards her home-village about 80 km south of Lilongwe. She was brought to the Tikondane transit shelter. A Tikondane Social Worker went to meet Madalitso’s aunt and reminded her of the fact that she was abusing the child. The aunt had to provide the money for the bus-fare of the child to go back home. The Social worker escorted Madalitso to the grandmother who was shocked to hear what had happened. She promised that she would ensure that the girl could attend school, even if there was a considerable walking distance.

2. But the children/orphans are not always so well received when they return home. When Yamikani’s employer came to their village to recruit boys for herding his cattle, the agreement was that Yamikani’s uncle would receive Mk 6000 after one year. One day, after three months, Yamikani lost control over the cows and the animals damaged the crops of other villagers. Yamikani was chased away without pay and ended up in the town of Lilongwe. Tikondane brought the issue to the attention of the Police. A Police officer escorted the Tikondane Social Worker to the farm of the employer, about 50 km north of Lilongwe. The employer got a warning and was made to pay the boy his due wages. Back in the village the uncle did not hide his disappointment, and other relatives and neighbours, too, mocked Yamikani for having failed to work and earn money. Child-labour is commonly not looked at from the perspective of what is in the best interest of the child, but from the perspective of economic necessity or profit of the ‘owners of the child’ and the employer. The Social Worker discussed with the people the advantages and disadvantages of child labour. He reminded them of the fact, that child labour was illegal in Malawi and enlightened them about the reality of street-life, which often is a consequence of it, esp. if children have been sent to work in areas far away from home.

The Social worker went with Yamikani to register him at school and the boy was promised that Tikondane would visit him once or twice per school-term. The follow up visits are meant to encourage the boy to stay and home and go to school, and as an encouragement for the family to be supportive to him.

3. Work with communities

Chronic poverty and food-insecurity force many parents and guardians to send their children to work on farms or as domestic servants. Farmers rely on chemical fertilizer to grow their maize. The prices are exorbitant, completely out of reach for subsistence farmers. The villagers rely on relatives who work in town to send them the money for fertilizer, or they feel they have to send children to work. Organic methods of farming, e.g. through use of soil-improving crops or production and use of compost manure are not popular. But high quality food production is possible as demonstrated by the success of the few farmers who farm with initiative, perseverance and conviction. Tikondane worked with three communities on issues of food-security and child-labour (total of 26 visits during the year). Three educational visits were organized to expose these parents to  alternative ways of farming. In one area, Chakachadza, Tikondane supported the efforts of the community by supplying 2 treadle-pumps for irrigation.
A vibrant youth-group emerged at Undi-village. They compose songs, poems, and drama on burning issues like problems of orphans, sexual violence, AIDS, child-labour as well as street-life. They perform them in their own and neighbouring villages.
Tikondane provided a foot-ball and a netball to this youth group, which have been used a lot for sporting activities. As a ‘by-product’ of all these activities, the villagers even noted that there has been less theft in the gardens, because the young people were meaningfully busy!
Their songs and poems were also broadcasted in a 30 min program of the Diocesan radio station.

4. NETWORKING

Because of the immensity of the task, Tikondane is keenly aware of the need for networking. Tikondane works in regular and close collaboration with the Victims Support Unit of the Police, and as needs arise with the District Social Welfare. There has been growing communication and collaboration among organizations working in the same field, e.g. Tikondane was occasionally asked to accommodate children who were in the care of others, and others occasionally took on the follow up of Tikondane children in the southern and northern regions.
The homes of the children who come to Tikondane are spread out through the whole country. Food-insecurity, child-labour, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, psychosocial needs of children in general and of orphans in particular, are issues which need to be addressed at different levels.
Tikondane is member of the National Network of Organisations working with Vulnerable and Orphan Children (NOVOC), which has a membership of over 1200 community-based, faith-based and non-governmental organisations. A directory of organizations has been produced with the aim of knowing the agents in the field. Building the capacity of these organisations for providing better quality psycho-social care was a core activity in 2005. NOVOC’s Priority Areas of Focus will be the Coordination of capacity-building for Psycho-Social Care, Advocacy, as well as community-development and food-security.

5.Transit-shelter and Newcomers

During the past year, the majority of children who were assisted by Tikondane had been referred to us by the Victims Support Unit of the Police. Others were identified by our Social Workers through street-outreach or brought by members of the public. Our Transit-shelter is still the only place in Lilongwe which offers safe transit-accommodation for children at night. We had 1549 overnight stays, 1297 of children, and 252 of women. This means an average stay of 4,25 nights.

The number of new-comers who were assisted in 2005 was slightly lower than in the previous year, because we intensified follow-up visits and support of previously reintegrated children. In fact, beneficiaries of Tikondane’s interventions are not only the children identified in town, but most of the time also the other children of the household.        
The early identification of newcomers remains a great challenge, and the need for collaboration among the organizations working with street-children cannot be stressed enough.
Desperate economic situations, loss of parents and other primary caretakers through death, as well as unstable families and alcohol-problems are underlying factors for most of the below mentioned reasons which make children vulnerable for being pushed or pulled to the streets.

We would like to thank all those, who, through their various contributions and support have enabled us to render a service which has made a great difference in the lives of many children and families.