Street children attend school

Alphonce Mutaboyerwa is leader of the human rights centre in Mwanza in Tanzania - an MS-partner since 1958.

By Jens Lærke

21. november 2003

“Our focus is on children who have lived on the street for less than three months. After this, it is very difficult to persuade them to return to their families.”

Alphonce Mutaboyerwa, 54 years old, has been the leader of Kuleana Centre for Children’s Rights in Tanzania since 1998. It is one of the largest civil organisations in the country, and receives financial assistance from MS. Kuleana is a well-known name in the town of Mwanza in northern Tanzania. Here the organisation has worked for ten years with removing children from the hard life on the streets and taking them back to school. The overall objective of the organisation is to improve the conditions of children’s rights so that they are not exploited.

Many of the children who end up on the streets have fled from broken families with problems of violence, alcohol, poverty and divorce. Many of the children have become orphans due to AIDS. The boys – and few girls – are as young as six-seven years old and earn small change in the daytime by washing cars, washing dishes in restaurants or by plain begging. At night, they sleep wherever they can find shelter from dust or the rain that makes the streets waterlogged in the rainy season.

“The youngest child we looked after was a three-year-old baby who had been left at the gate of the Kuleana Centre. The child was lying there one morning and crying. It is the parents who are unable to look after their own children,” says Alphonce.

Back to parents

“At the Kuleana Centre, we have specialised in helping street children. We advise them and try to convince them that it is better for them to return home. But there are also children who do not have any home. For such children, we offer training in craftsmanship so that they can have a future,” says Alphonce. He informs us that 95% of the street children who came to the centre in 2002 returned to their parents.

Children’s rights are the focus area of Alphonce’s work – first and foremost, the right to education. It also means that the organisation attempts to contain child labour.

“We are well aware that it is impossible to ban child labour, but we try to reduce its negative consequences as much as possible. The children often work under slave-like conditions in households. However, this should not prevent them from receiving education. There should be a balance between work and school. If children are under 14 years, they ought to be attending school,” believes Alphonce.

“We receive street children and try to convince them that it is better for them to return home. But there are also children who do not have any home. We offer them training in craftsmanship so that they can have a future. However, we can not control the basic problems such as poverty, divorce and violence at home.”
Alphonce Mutaboyerwa

Pushing for change

“We can not control the basic problems such as poverty, divorce and violence at home. So long as nothing is done about these problems, we have a long way to go. The question is how we can work together with other organisations and tackle these problems. The social authorities have given up as they do not have sufficient funds or staff. We do what the government does not do,and we loudly draw attention to the problems. We are pushing for a change,” says Alphonce, who himself has worked for ten years for the Tanzanian government.

There are regularly 60-70 children up to 18 years of age at the Kuleana Centre. They stay for a maximum of eighteen months at the centre where they are taught mathematics, reading, writing and varied craftsmanships. Kuleana has an agreement with a local school to accept the pupils who have a talent and an opportunity of going ahead in the educational system.

Alphonce is a qualified economist and he has four children – the youngest one is 16 years old.

“Working for children’s rights has taught me a lot about my relationship with my own children. Now I know that the children need to spend time with their parents. It takes time to make the children speak about their feelings,” says Alphonce Mutaboyerwa.