The Street Children Project

The Street Children Project is an initiative of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi set up to address the problems of young vulnerable children who are displaced and homeless and living in street situations in the city. The project is managed by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. It was officially launched in June 2005, and since then the organisation has gone from strength to strength and it regularly rolls out training to instruct people how to work with children on the streets.

The Daughters of Charity run a drop in centre in the Cathedral complex, which is open every day during the week. The outreach work of the project focuses on the alarming number of girls in street situations and therefore most of the lessons revolve around what the girls are affected by - for instance hygiene, STIs (sexually transmitted infections), and pregnancy. The trained workers meet the girls on the streets and offer them the chance to visit the centre, where there are a number of facilities and the opportunity to rest in a safe environment, away from the streets.

The Street Children Project has recently started up two crèches for the children of the street mothers, to provide a safe place for them to be while their mothers go to work. The crèches daily take in 26 children under the age of 6. These children are indeed the lucky ones and are prepared for the exam they take aged 6 to enter into formal education. This exam is standard practice in Ghana, and children are expected to know their alphabet and be able to recite a song and a poem before they are accepted to schools.

In addition to the drop in centre and the crèches, the Street Children Project also runs an outreach programme. Every day workers visit the streets to reach out to the girls who live there, and twice a week they conduct a night visit; both to the streets where many children sleep and to the shanty towns were some girls will club together to rent a tiny room with a hard concrete floor.