TIKONDANE      
A project of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (MSOLA)
in Lilongwe, Malawi)

Protecting children from the dangers of living on the streets

Ten years have passed since the humble beginnings of what would later become known as TIKONDANE. It was a response to a new development in Malawi during the 1990s, namely a growing number of children living and begging in the streets. The Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa  (MSOLA) who had been in Malawi since 1911 (commonly known as The White Sisters) and who had responded to changing needs through history, felt challenged to contribute to addressing this new and very distressing situation. In collaboration with the Catholic Diocese of Lilongwe they appointed Sr Rita Hieble to research the problem and to develop a relevant response to it in Lilongwe.
From the beginning there has been a keen awareness that children who live in the streets are the symptoms of serious problems in families and in society as a whole. The roots of these problems are in both global and local relationships and structures which don’t serve the common good. These negative developments need to be challenged by values which promote the good and the dignity of all. The Gospel is Good News because of such values.
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn 10,10). The Mission of Jesus has been to promote and to liberate Life. We understand our commitment as taking part in this Mission in the service of Life. We have therefore strived to build up an organization that will operate according to such life-promoting values.
Most of the children who come to TIKONDANE have been deeply wounded. Just as medical personnel need professional skills to heal the physical sicknesses and wounds of their patients, so do social work staff need special skills to help children heal the emotional wounds and injuries which have been inflicted on them. In order to build up such skills, Mrs Katrin vom Hoff joined TIKONDANE in March in the capacity of Advisor for Counseling and Child Therapy. Her main task is in-service training of the social workers through training sessions, and guidance for ‘individual intensive child support’.
From the perspective of a Child Rights Approach (CRA) and in a context where the poor, the weak and those without connections have very little chance of getting their rights enforced, Tikondane has continued assisting children to access their rightful claims and support them through often very difficult processes.

OUR WORK IN 2008

Most of our new children and women/mothers reached Tikondane through the Victim Support Unit of the Police. Not all of them would have ended up and remained on the streets, but many would have been exposed to street life for some time and would have been subjected to devastating experiences. A considerable number of them, however, would have stayed on the streets without an alternative.

RE-INTEGRATION
We aim to re-integrate these children into their own families, by the following means: 

1. Transit shelter The shelter is a very important facility that offers children actual protection and access to their rights. Children can be temporarily accommodated, and this allows us to listen to them, take time to trace their families and work with them, as well as plan other interventions like psycho-social, psycho-therapeutic, medical or legal support.
2. Escort  In most cases it is necessary for the social workers to escort children to their respective homes in order to ensure that the children reach home safely, to understand the home situation of the children, to act as an advocate for the children, and to offer advice and guidance to parents or guardians.
3. Follow-up visitsIn many cases, follow-up visits are crucial for a successful re-integration. In many instances, a child leaving a home is a symptom of problems in the family or community.  In order to stabilize the situation, all those involved need to be helped to deal with the often hidden, underlying issues. The main task of the social worker in this sensitive process is to enable and encourage children, families and communities to look at the real problem in order to find a true solution.
If there is a real need (i.e. not automatically) we provide some groceries, maize, school uniforms, etc.
4. Boarding schools Through collaboration with boarding schools we have been able to continue offering alternatives to children who cannot stay fully with their relatives. But most of them have relations who welcome them for the holidays.
For children who have actually lived on the streets it is very difficult to cope with the rules and discipline in boarding school life. They need a preparation period of at least one school term at Tikondane, and to have a very strong motivation to go to school. Once in boarding school, they need frequent follow-up visits from the social workers.

CHILDREN WHOSE ‘FAMILY’ IS THE PEER GROUP IN THE STREETS

The main effort of Tikondane is to protect new children from being absorbed into street life. However, our social workers continued reaching out to those children who cannot easily be re-integrated and remain on the streets.
Again this year we have witnessed how innocent children can get hooked up in circumstances which are a threat to themselves and to society. One morning, for example, two ten-year-old boys came to our shelter with newly bought children’s suitcases, filled with new toys, clothes, cigarettes, airtime, groceries and about MK90,000 (equivalent to 450 Euro). They said that they had witnessed a fight at night where one man was stabbed and seriously wounded. They said that after everybody had left the scene, the two went to the wounded man and searched his pockets where they found money….   They came to tell our social workers, both because they felt they could trust them, and because they realized that they were in danger of being caught, beaten up and robbed of their things.

Later it was established that they had entered a shop through the roof and taken about MK160,000 from there. They had been taught how to do this by older criminals, who had used them before. This time they tried it on their own…..to them it seemed to be a game. They had no notion of the seriousness of what they had done and of the real danger they were in.

One important contributing factor for children getting hooked into street life is the handouts they receive from well-wishers. Young, innocent-looking begging children attract much pity and generosity. They often receive hundreds of kwacha in a short time, and also food and clothes. Once they grow older it becomes more difficult to receive handouts. One fifteen-year-old refused treatment for a large burn wound in order not to lose his means of attracting pity. Others resort to violence in order to get what they want.
Thanks to the commitment of the social workers and the strong will of some boys who realized that there was no future for them in the streets, these boys found their way back into their families.

AWARENESS RAISING THROUGH RADIO PROGRAMS

(Seventeen 30-minute programs on Radio Maria, a Christian station on satellite radio; one program and 5 features on Radio Zodiak, the most popular station in Malawi)

In these programs we aimed at making the listeners aware of what is going on in the streets, about how it happens that children come to Tikondane, and about what the listeners can do to protect their own and other children from getting into such situations. Some of the issues we treated were begging, sickness and death of parents, child labour, child trafficking, sexual abuse, early marriage, witchcraft accusations, common problems affecting the lives of young people, depression, and grief. 

CHILDREN GET A CHANCE

Looking at our young clients in Tikondane’s shelter, we find that most of them are labeled as “troublesome”.  It is common for families and neighborhoods to assign to the child all the responsibility for the situation he or she is in. In many cases the social workers are told: “When the boy/girl changes (s)he can come back”.
The problem is that a child can’t change if causes like domestic violence, abuse, neglected grief, deprivation, child labor etc. haven’t changed.

DIGGING DEEPER – BEHAVIOUR ALWAYS HAS A REASON
Two examples of Intensive Individual Child Support

Fatsani - The girl who had given up on life

Fatsani (15) first came to Tikondane four years ago after running away from her workplace in Lilongwe where she had worked for some time as a housemaid.  She said that she was not treated well and that the work was too much for her. As usual, one of our social workers escorted her to her home village, where she had to live with her elder, married sister, because her parents had died.
Tikondane was still in contact with the girl when in 2008 they got the message that Fatsani was seriously ill. She was refusing to take medication and was close to death. The girl spent most of the day lying on the ground, covered from head to foot in a blanket.  Fatsani seemed to be just fading away.
A social worker made a follow-up visit and told her again and again: “I WANT YOU TO LIVE!” and “I WANT YOU TO COME TO TIKONDANE!” One week later we got a phone-call from the village, saying that Fatsani was getting better. She had started taking part in daily household chores and wanted to come to Tikondane.
Because of the seriousness of her condition Fatsani received ’individual intensive child support’. This meant she had time alone with one social worker who listened to her and worked with her on her ‘story’.
Fatsani shared that after her parents died, the relatives decided to separate the children from each other and place them into different families in order to spread the burden of taking care of the orphans. The sister who had taken her in soon decided to send her to town to work as a housemaid and nanny.  Fatsani revealed that she was even subjected to sexual violence and that she was molested by the owner of the house before she found the courage to run away. The girl felt unloved, very lonely, exploited and left alone with her grief.  She lost trust in herself, others and in life.
The one to one IICS (Intensive Individual Child Support) sessions helped her to understand her own behavior as normal inher process of grief, and little by little the girl regained trust in life and in herself.
Fatsani developed a remarkably strong will to live. This brought her to the point where life at Tikondane was boring for her – she wanted to widen her circle and face life ’outside’.
The girl still needs occasional time alone, but now she can enjoy spending time in the company of friends, and she is serious as well as successful with her studies.