Children’s Project

The World often states that children are Humanity’s Future, and it’s right, they are tomorrow’s adults. When I look at Angolan’s street kids, I often think that this country doesn’t have much of a future. It has been MgM’s goal, for the last 4 years, to try to change this perspective.

There are a lot of reasons for this problem and very little solutions. It starts with culture, as females are valued for the number of children they can birth, males on how many children they can father, to this we add illiteracy and poverty and you end up with an enormous never-ending problem of children being neglected and abandoned.

There is a lot we could say about the irresponsible parenting skills and the lack of assistance from the Government, but in the end, all these discussions won’t help the children and they continue on the streets starved and alone.

 MgM started to supply, some of them, with a plate of soup and bread just to make their day a little more comfortable, we started with a group of 5 children and at the moment we have more than 30, but as the news spread, we were faced with too many children to feed and we did not have the funds nor the space to accommodate everyone.

We continued to serve soup to as many as we could daily, nevertheless, but that wasn’t the solution we were looking for.

Our plan is to build a compound with sleeping quarters, kitchen a Cantine, a centre for learning, professional training and games, a space where we could plant what we need for the soups and raise some animals also. This would make the Centre self-sufficient.

Teaching these children is probably the most important part of the project, with the acquired knowhow they would be able to fend for themselves at a later stage in life. At the centre they could learn practical skills, with the day to day running of the centre. We would have professionals to teach the children different abilities, as agriculture, livestock, cooking, cleaning, selling, accounting and much more.

The Compound

Sleeping Quarters

This would house children according to age and gender to avoid possible bulling and other interrelations between children.

We would have a house mother to care for them and pass some culture knowledge, as we want them to keep their cultural background.

Each house would hold between 4 to 6 children as it is more or less the family size for a normal family in Angola.

Kitchen and Cantine

This would allow us to feed more children, even those that have parents and can sleep at home. Many of the parents, mothers, work as street vendors (zumgueiras) and cannot take the children with, and if they do, it’s only the very young ones whom are still on the breast. The others, either stay at a corner begging for money or walking through the town asking for food. If we could accommodate some of these children, we could arrange for them to go to school and teach them some skills at the compound.

We want to use our own grown vegetables and livestock to supply the kitchen. We understand that this cannot be immediate but with the passing of time that would be our final goal. 

Livestock

The compound will have a designated are to keep cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and goats. These would be kept for breeding and food for the Cantine and would allow the children to interact and care for the animals teaching them where their food comes from.

Planting fields

The compound will have also a designated area for planting vegetables and corn. Maize flour is the main food for Angolans, it is used as a porridge for the children and served with most main meals. The vegetables would be used in the Cantine and the remainder would be sold to the street vendors.

Learning centre

This would be on the main hall of the compound, where children would have books, computers and games with professional kindergarten teacher to lead the children on their development.

At the start we would partner with other local NGO’s to enable the children to attend school, this would happen to children on and above the age of 6.

Children that are older than 13 would do the illiteracy courses and would start with the technical training on one of the compound’s specialities.

This way we can cover a wide spectrum of children and teenager that currently live on the streets.

This project has a long timeframe, it’s not something that would start fully functional as it would be very costly, nevertheless we are pointing at 6 years to finish all buildings and be able to cover most of the costs with the funds generated by the work done by the students on their craft, agriculture and livestock.

We are available to give more information and invite everyone to be a part of this bold project.