The situation for children without a family
Homeless children are permanently exposed to danger to life and limb. It is very difficult to protect themselves from assaults or illnesses. A vicious circle of poverty, criminality and displacement is part of their everyday lives. They never get to experience unconditional affection or personal esteem. Kids of Africa gives children like them security, education and confidence. We coordinate our aid work closely with Uganda’s state bodies. The healthy development of our children is our daily mission, in the hope that one day, they will be able to return to society as responsible Ugandan citizens with life skills and common sense.
Uganda is a country of contradictions. Nature’s bounty has been generous, but the country has made little use of it. The reasons for this are many and varied: rural depopulation, ecological degradation, polygamy in urban slums, social services that are unable to cope, poor infrastructure, limited education and more besides.
Only when social services have exhausted all the means available to them to find families to accommodate children like these, do we come into the picture as the “last resort” – something that we have been doing for almost 15 years now.
Protecting those that cannot be heard
Those who bear the brunt are often children and the ill, and their stories can be absolutely harrowing.
- An 11-year-old girl becoming a mother against her will;
- An 18-year-old woman, abused many times, giving birth to her third child;
- A one-year-old boy ritually sacrificed to «heal the sick»;
- Five young children who lost both parents to AIDS and where there is no social safety net in the slum where they live.
Children like these have no voice to express the perilous situation they find themselves in, and this is exactly why we support them. For them to be able to find us, we work in close cooperation with Uganda’s state social services. We make it possible for the authorities to be able to say “yes” to these children.