The Magnitude of Need

Kenya has an alarmingly high mortality rate due to HIV( AIDS). It ranks 9th in the world in reported cases of HIV infection. The failed or overstretched health system does not meet the needs of these children let alone a population of about 30 million. Private health networks which offer better care can only be accessed by average and above average families. These kids have no access to health care and if they did, they would not receive reasonable health care in public hospitals because of lack of medicine in public hospitals.

The unemployment rate is at an all time high, in rural places as high as 55% living below poverty standards. This has resulted in mass exodus of professionals to other countries that would offer employment opportunities. Nurses and doctors have been hardest hit, leaving the system with little or no staff. Those who have opted to stay are unmotivated. Teachers remain underpaid as well resulting in countless strikes alongside nurses. Thousands of teachers have also died as a result of AIDS . The bottom line affects kids. Kids have suffered tremendously under these conditions. Recent political events have totally elevated urgency to address kids caught in the economic and political shifts .

AIDS remains the highest cause of mortality rate in Kenya with 600 kids orphaned every day. An estimated 1 million AIDS orphans currently live in Kenya.

Tribal wars since 1992 have resulted in displacement of thousands of families. Kids have been the victims of these clashes. Thousands of families have lost their homes as well as their possessions as a result of their homes being destroyed in the fighting. When families have to start over in new parts of the country with virtually nothing, kids often are the victims. Finding schools in time to catch always requires tremendous effort.

Poverty is rampant in Kenya. Boys on the streets are frequently engaged in the collection of waste products for sale. Girls are regularly involved in involuntary sex and /or sexual exchange for money. Street girls of unknown number become mothers while living street life.

Between 5,000 - 8,000 ‘chokora’ - swahili term for scavenger were documented in 1997. The word is applied by Kenyans to children and younger who are primarily on the streets begging, collecting waste paper for sale, sniffing glue, sleeping in alleyways and on corners and selling their bodies for survival.

Early in history of the current phenomenon of street children in Nairobi in the early 70's, girls were not seen on the streets and the few young boys who offered to watch your parked car while you were away (for a few shillings) were called "Parking boys." In the 1980's girls were beginning to be seen with the boys, young girls from 5 and up were seen begging, toting infants, and in the evening, soliciting men for sex or being lured into forced sex.

More and more young Kenyans are seen each year without a place to sleep at night and not attending school. Their numbers reaching more than 600,000 threatening Kenyan citizens while a solution is hardly forthcoming from the government. (Dr. Philip Kilbride study between June 1 - Aug, 1996 focused).

Kenyan newspapers have reported on the street children in recent years, as they become an unavoidable presence. In 1993, June 16, the Day of the African Child, there were two articles showcased. One "focused on street boys and the health effects of their addictions to glue, petrol, benzene, paraffin, paint thinners (Mowkish, 1993). The other focused on street girls and prostitution and quoted statistics on AIDS infection among street girls. In 1993, according to the article , nine out of ten girls either had a sexually transmitted disease or had been treated for one in the past. That number has more than tripled since then. Three out of every ten tested and diagnosed girls in the streets had the HIV virus while four out of ten had a combination of one or two sexually transmitted diseases. Because of lack of medical resources, condoms, and information for this population, we can only assume that in 2002, those numbers more than quadrupled.

Street children are spilling over into all of the public space and attitudes of the general public of Nairobi - who are even just a little bit more fortunate are hostile for the most part. Most Kenyans fear street children when they should offer sympathy. Children harass others and fight amongst themselves and can become violent if not given money they beg for. (They look like your own little girl but they are bare foot in grass strewn parks, dirty in ragged clothing, and have lost trust in adults most people take for granted.)

The poor people’s movement in the United States uses the acronym N.A.M.B.Y.(Not in my backyard) to describe how most people feel about homelessness and mental illness. People would rather not see it. The Kenyan government’s solution to vagrancy is temporary and horrible - periodic sweeps with police lorries gathers street children and drop them off in temporary holding cells. They keep the children until the cells are full and then release them to pick them up again on the next sweep. For Kenyan government, street children are more of an embarrassment to the city’s image then anything else and so they have no real time or permanent solution for this problem.

Though the situation is not as violent in Nairobi as it is in some global cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were street children are being murdered in large groups by government ordered death squads and by drug gang, street children of all ages in Nairobi experience beatings (occasionally fatal) by the police. This not only concerns any human with conscience, but also acts as a fuel for this organization. This tragedy will be the fuel in which our mission is driven in order that we may strive alleviate human the suffering to the best of our abilities. Along the way we will need all the support we can get from our friends and well wishers who share the same hope and zeal that one day we will live in a world where kids do not have to beg or sell their bodies on the streets in order that they may put food in their stomachs.

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