safechildadvocacy

Safe-Child Advocacy (formerly known as Street Children Project) was establishment in September 2005 by the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi under the Management of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Together with a dynamic team of committed staff, the sisters work to get children in street situations reintegrate into society facilitating their access to formal education and skill training and other essential services to ensure economically independent and meaningful future for children formerly on the street or at risk of taking to the street. On working days field staff meet children on the streets where they carry out their daily engagements such as, carrying loads, hawking, loitering, shoes polishing/shinning, assisting food vendors, etc. Workers try to create rapport with children on the streets and gain their trust to interact deeper with them. With this relationship they are able to get to know each child's story, the conditions that pushed the child to the streets and the best way to assist the child. Sometimes this means a child is going back to his/her parents and to school or skills training, sometimes the child just likes to visit the drop-in Centre to have some rest, learn basic literacy and social/relational skills. In a slum area, near the market, there is a creche for children who are at risk of becoming street children. Sometimes these are children of street children, sometimes children of market women. The creche shelters the young children to keep them off the street and provide them with early childhood education and prevent them ending up on the streets like their parents.