The Property Breakfast Club has funded the purchase of the Kabarondo boys centre for World Jewish Relief's Street Children's programme in Eastern Rwanda. This centre is an essential part of WJR's work with more than 200 of the 10,000 street children in Rwanda and has been at risk of being sold. The Property Breakfast Club's gift will secure the future of this programme and the immediate lives of the 33 boys currently living in the centre.
Street Children's Programme
WJR has been working in Rwanda since 2005 in partnership with the Streets Ahead Children's Centre (SACCA) focusing on issues relating to street-living/working children. WJR's Street Children's programme provides a holistic method of support and development for current and former street children in the eastern province of the country. Through its three residential centres, of which Kabarondo is the main one, the programme provides the children with love, security, food, education, medical care and a chance to have a childhood. Crucially the centres also equip the children with core skills to enable them to live independently and as part of Rwandan society when the time comes for them to leave.
Rwanda has made great progress since the events of 1994, but the country still faces serious challenges. Its problems are those associated with all developing countries: poverty combined with lack of health care, sanitation and access to education, but greatly complicated by the long-term effects of the 1994 Genocide. Many children take to the streets in search of a better future or at least something to eat, leaving home environments of extreme poverty, their families being unable to provide such basic needs as food, clothing or education or requiring exhausting manual work thus denying them a childhood. Street children are especially vulnerable to violence and exploitation and without assistance remain marginalised and vulnerable.
All children at the centre choose to be there and the boys help design and develop their own programme. This ensures they progress at a rate with which they feel at ease. This engaging approach secures a very high success rate in bringing children off the street and giving them the necessary tools to lead a self-sufficient and stable life.
Finally, we have also made a commitment to pay for the building of a toilet block and kitchens for the centre. This work will commence early next year.
Please see attached some photographs of the centre.