This scheme supports 550 orphans and disabled children belonging to poor and destitute families and street children. It is a sponsorship to pay for their education expenses–that is school fees, hostel fees, exams and so on for the young people of secondary schools. The children of primary schools, are provided with maize and sugar by KISEDET supplied during the morning (please note, however, that this is granted to all the children not only to those supported by KISEDET by means of sponsorship). Depending on the available funds KISEDET buy maize to grant these children one meal a day; the mothers help with beans and fresh or dried vegetables, depending on the season. We also support these children’s families by setting up small businesses. This is the core of all our schemes. Let’s consider the ELDERLY AND DISABLED PEOPLE scheme: they often live with the orphan children who can’t attend a school because they have to do some works (getting water for their daily needs or taking the elderly people everywhere they need, working on the fields, cooking and so on). If these people weren’t blind they could do the works and so the children could go to school. This is why KISEDET have decided to help these people undergo eye surgery to let them see well again. So these children get their identities back.
KISEDET buy textbooks for secondary schools. Unluckily books are expensive and lots of people can’t afford them. The schools themselves often haven’t got the books and so the teachers can’t do their regular lessons properly. By buying textbooks KISEDET help the whole school and not only the pupils supported by sponsorship.
How the scheme is going on…
The two young people who were studying to become schoolteachers, Dafroza e Laurenti, have finished school this year and now they’re teaching at primary schools. Dafroza is teaching in the Shinyanga area, near the lakes and Laurenti in the Mwanza area, by Lake Victoria.
130 children are attending high/secondary schools and 20 are attending vocational schools of various skills. Others are attending colleges to become secondary school teachers or veterinary surgeons. Six are attending the first year of a university (5 boys and 1 girl).
The objective of KISEDET is to educate these young people so that they may find a profession or a job.
Furthermore, since 2010 KISEDET have taken care of street children, unluckily a growing problem over these last few years. KISEDET try to reintegrate them in their families by taking care of them once back home and supporting them in their education, basic needs and food.
Those from far away areas from DODOMA are hosted at SHUKURANI CENTRE (see below) until they are reintegrated in their families. The first thing we do is to approach them to let them feel they’re loved children, they are important and someone takes care of them—that is, that they are NOT parasites, as people usually see them.
We have started to make people aware of this situation by means of songs, dances and acrobatics performed by the children themselves together with those who have been living for a long time at SHUKURANI Centre. This has been contributed by Alice, Nino and Gio’s daughter, and KISEDET volunteers (see “Jokers without frontiers”).
