Street Children and Youths Project (SCYP)

Jimma/Ethiopia

Facilitators for Change (FC)

Jimma is a regional administrative and economical center with ca. 150.000 inhabitants, about 350 km south west of Addis Ababa. It is the center of the coffee trade for the southwestern part of Ethiopia. Due to its big market the city attracts mainly day laborers who live in the slums. Many children from the impoverished part of the population must provide for their own livelihood or support the family income by working as carriers, shoe shiners, raffle ticket sellers, or street vendors. Thereby they become „street children“, omnipresent around the market and bus terminal. According to the authorities there are around 3.500 street children living in Jimma. They usually are homeless, do not attend school, and have neither adequate clothing nor food.

The goal of our project is to place the street children and youths under the direct protection of society („community based child care“), to prepare the children as well as their families for reunification, to support them economically, and to provide follow-ups through social workers and volunteers for at least one year. The „community“ (initiatives by the community) comprises of four Idirs, traditional groups for self-help, who are aware of the street children problem. They have felt responsible for the children since the beginning of the project in 2003. Together with the professional support of our Ethiopian partner organization Facilitators for Change (FC) volunteers from the Idirs care for these children.

After acceptance into the project the homeless children are either being placed into voluntary foster families or into supervised group homes. They then may go to school and can get a basic vocational training in the training center. If the children are under 14 years of age the mothers receive some schooling in money management and are supported economically for a successful reunification with their children.

Older youths receive a financial start aid so that they can become economically independent and are able to at least support themselves partly. In contrast to their work „on the street“ they now can work with supervision and are supported by social workers from FC with the protection of the Idirs.

In this pdf file you can find a more detailed information of Community Based Rehabilitation of Street Children in our common model project.

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