Rescuing Children

Amani’s team of street educators connect with homeless children and let them know that Amani will provide them with safety, good food, medical care and an education.

Amani’s team hits the streets of Moshi and the nearby city of Arusha every night, meeting with the hundreds of children who sleep in gutters, bathe in polluted streams and beg and work for food.

The purpose is to connect with homeless children and let them know that Amani is a viable -and much improved- alternative to living in the streets.

One way our street educators meet homeless children is through their connections with shopkeepers, taxi drivers and older homeless people: “informants” who update them when a child has just arrived in the streets. The sooner we can identify and talk to a child who recently arrived in the streets, the greater the chance that child can be rescued from the physical and emotional suffering of life in the streets and returned to a normal childhood.

A major part of a street educator’s job is to build trust and an atmosphere of understanding with the children, many of whom have come from places where the adults in their lives abused their trust and hurt them. They do this by playing games, telling stories and taking the children places where they can wash their clothes and themselves.

Also, because Amani has been helping street children for years, the street educators have a lot of credibility there, and the children hear from others that they are their friends.