War Child Blog

Video - Andrew Mitchell in Congo

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:54:26 +0100

This summer we took Shadow Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell to Democratic Republic of Congo to see our work with children living on the streets. Check out his video report below.

Learn more about our work in DRC

Back to the Congo

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:25:28 +0000

War Child's field director in DRC recalls a flurry of lost bags, corrupt officialdom and frustration on her journey back to Congo.

Back in Kinshasa. Every time I’m home I wonder why I do this to myself. I start worrying about passports, baggage allowances and loving home and friends and family. . .

It’s always fine when you arrive. The first breath of humid air, banter with the airport immigration men who tend to be ok if you give them a big smile and call them Papa, the football stadium pitch of the baggage reclaim, full of boys trying to “carry” your bags...and then seeing the staff again, and the bright colours, and the general confusion. I remember I love this place.

Interesting flight back. Arrived at Heathrow at 4.30 am Tuesday to find flight cancelled. We were routed via Doha and Johannesburg. Instead of arriving at 6 that evening, it was midday the next day. A lot of grumbling in the queue – not from us. Of course this happens. It may look like Heathrow, but we know we’re on the way back to Congo. What do you expect?

Vaguely sanguine about the experience until we got to Jo’burg and were told our tickets weren’t valid, that we’d have to wait two days to go, that the flight closed at 8 and the air France offices only opened at 8. My sense of humour took a slip – it was 4 am UK time for the second day. Fortunately my friend Franz is much better at negotiating and taking on officials than me, and at 8.35 we were sprinting through the airport, lap tops flying, catching the bus as it drew out. Bags – currently missing: what can you do?

Arguing with officials is a skill here. Kat has been doing a sterling job. Administrator in the Congo is probably second only to Logistician in oxymoronic jobs. She’s been out black-mailing the corrupt inspectors, with tears and angst and “how can you do this to us when we’re trying to help” to reduce the fine that they inevitably find a way to make you pay. She finds it all very depressing. Sadly, and probably because she’s shielding me from the frustration, it just seems normal to me. And I swore to come back from holiday positive.

Rain and decay in Congo

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:05:44 +0000

Our field director in DRC on a country where death has become a way of life.

It rained all night. I lay awake as it crashed down, worrying that the office was going to flood and my laptop, cunningly hidden on the floor, would get wet and break. This wasn’t so much the issue but that I would loose the mind-numbing work I’d done on the budget yesterday.

The rain has already started to wash the roads away this season. Last years holes, reprieved briefly during the dry season, have started to show themselves again. Water half way up the land rovers wheel, large mud holes. It was amazing to see all the staff in on time. Usually it rains and the already bad transport system collapses. It takes some of them the best part of three hours to get in in the morning when the pot-holes become lakes and the decrepit, over filled taxi buses collapse.

The rains have been terrible this year. Officially 49 people dead and 66 wounded two weeks ago. And then people fall into overflowing drainage ditches, houses are washed away, all belongings, lost. And life goes on.

Rains and aeroplanes dropping from the sky recently. They do so with alarming regularity. All you do know everyday is that something unexpected will happen – even for me who spends most of my time in the office. Sudden floods and falling objects seem to be part of people’s lives: on-going resilience and humour is amazing - when not confronted by the corrupt tax man or police man: all part of the same system.

Playstations, guinea pigs and septic tanks

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:37:18 +0000

War Child's field director in Democratic Republic of Congo learns that septic tanks and Playstations are vital tools for progress for children who live and work on the streets in Kinshasa.

Another week gone by. Time disappears. You start Monday ready for a fight – and suddenly its Friday, and you’ve done 60% of your task list and a hundred other bits and pieces.

I visited two of the centres today. It’s been a while since I did. I seem to spend most of my time in the office. It is really good to see the differences: we got shown round mattresses, broken games of baby-foot, TVs, a kitchen and the water cistern. It is amazing what you learn. We got lectures on drainage ditches and septic tanks, growing peanuts, rearing guinea pigs for food and how to make a profit from a cassava mill. And you rapidly become an expert in all of the above.

Best though was the boys in one of the centres playing computer games. Brilliant. The centre is not well equipped: they don’t have enough food and the staff aren’t paid enough, but the boys have a Playstation. Same as boys anywhere. It clearly has been a huge success – keeps them off the streets and playing happily in teams What next? Wii? – all the rage in the Kinshasa ex-pat community.

This though always makes me question development structures. You have money for budget lines from donors. We can therefore support several centres with all sorts of training and rehab. However, we can’t support another centre with this money. This means that the children are getting sick because we can’t pay for toilet repairs. It sounds crazy, but it’s the way it is. How does one include “rebuilding toilets and the septic tank” under “training to support project management” on the other side of town?

Hey ho. At least its an improvement on where they were. . .

Poverty on the steets of Kinshasa

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:35:50 +0000

Poverty is a daily struggle for thousands of people living in Kinshasa and our field director in Democratic Republic of Congo ses it every day. In her regular blog she talks about the challenge of working in these difficult conditions and the glimmers of hope along the way.

You can become pretty blasé about poverty in Kinshasa. At every set of traffic light there are blind women led by children, men without legs swinging themselves between the cars, disembodied hands at the window, street children asking for bread. I put my sun glasses down and look forward. “Desolé. Ce n’est pas possible”, concealing fear and irritation. It’s worst when the kids say “mais vous etes War Child. Moi, je suis un enfant de la geurre” – but you’re war child, and I’m a war child. It is all so unfair – and you know it. But you can’t engage or you go mad.

And then you see a small child sweeping the road. Or hear about a child who has just started to study again. Or a girl that’s been raped. Or died. And its about individuals again.

NGOs. All of us are doing a job. Like in any other office we have budgets and reports. We have a timetable and limits. Most of the time, it’s like any other job. With the added pressure of “making a difference”. You can only hope. In the mean time the functioning of an organisation is about not having personality, about consistency.

People always say, if you change one person’s life, it makes it worth it. Working at a distance from the children, it’s hard to know if you do or if you’re making a difference to the enormous need. Listening to people and being flexible to what they need; changing programmes so that they are more suitable for partners and children – it’s about the best we can do.

And that’s why it’s good to be small. And why its not. We can only stick to what we do - a drop in the ocean. But at least we know the people we’re working with and can sometimes let the bureaucracy slip. Rarely helps when I’m facing down a homeless 12 year old from the height of my 4x4 though.

Street Life (Part 1)

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:52:44 +0000

War Child's CEO Mark Waddington has travelled to DRC to report back on our work with children living on the streets there. In the first of several blogs from him he meets Delphin and Anna, two girls recently referred to one of our centres for street children.

I met Delphin for the first time this morning. She is five and has experienced life in a way that no child should. Her entire estate comprises a dirty old smock. No shoes. Nothing but the smock.

The effects of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo have led to the deaths of more than 2.7 million children under the age of five. The social fabric that would normally protect children has unraveled and the economy has dissolved.

Delphin’s mother has died and her father, no longer able to cope, has abandoned her.

Delphin’s sister, Anna, is seven and has shown great courage in supporting her. Both children have been living in one of Kinshasa’s many markets, scraping for vegetable debris in the rubbish around trestle tables, helping traders in return for food while keeping a wary out eye for older children, the police and those who would beat them for living on the street.

Over the past two years War Child has been working with local groups of people who have recognised the suffering of children like Delphin and Anna. We have trained them to work with the community of street children – there are 20,000 in Kinshasa alone – by establishing listening posts. It is through these listening posts that Delphin and Anna were referred to us.

They arrived this morning at one of the street children’s centres we support. Both girls were eating a healthy meal of fish, beans and fufu by the time I got there. War Child has trained and invested in the staff at the centre, which is one of our local partner organisations.

Through this training the staff at the centre have learned how to gradually build a case profile of all the children in their care, which they use as a basis for tracing their families and mediating their reintegration: a long and involved process. But for now, there are a series of games they will use to help Delphin and Anna build friendships with the other children and, I hope, bring a smile to Delphin’s face.

All our partner organisations have been established by local people, and they have achieved this with few resources. War Child has assisted them by rehabilitating the street child centres they run: building clean toilets and showers, kitchen and play areas, and by providing furniture, especially beds, for the children. The training in child care, and health and hygiene has led to a very significant improvement in the health and well being of the children at our partner centres.

War Child also covers food costs for the children and their school fees. Schooling is a vital socialising process. And it keeps the children engaged positively with the local community through their relationships with other children and parents, teachers and supporters of the school.

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We'll be posting more of Mark's thoughts on Congo in the coming days. In the meantime feel free to learn more about our work in Congo.

All names in this story have been changed and photographs are for illustrative purposes only - they do not represent the children involved.

Street Life (Part 2)

admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:58:31 +0100

In the second of his reports from Democratic Republic of Congo War Child's CEO Mark Waddington reports on how our centres for street children operate and how children are getting involved in their management.

War Child supports six centres for street children in Kinshasa, enabling us to work with and support over 2,000 street children and many more who are at risk of being pushed onto the streets. And we are multiplying our impact by our advocacy which, on the one hand, is addressing the attitudes that underlie this problem and, on the other, enables us to influence policies in a way that benefit many more children than we could possibly hope to work with directly.

Because there are so many children suffering on the streets of Kinshasa, War Child has been careful to choose centres that other organisations do not work with. In fact, our target is those centres which have very limited capacity. In this way, we are better able to coordinate our collective efforts with the work of others and ensure a wider impact.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely vital that our support of the centres is sustainable so that we can reach more children by working with more centres. With this in mind, we have helped the centres by training their staff in business planning and have provided them with a grant to set up an income generating project so that they are, in time, able to cover their own costs. One of the centres I visited today has bought a grinding mill and charges people in the local community to grind maize into flour [see picture above]. The business model their staff took me through this afternoon indicates that by August the centre will be in a position to cover all its running cost and keep enough back to cover the service costs/replacement of the mill over the long term.

This in turn gives the children security. And children like Delphin need that security. And care.

The children are involved in the running of their centres, and even sit on their management committees. They are the experts on what it is like on the streets and so they are best placed to influence the decisions of our partners in a way that ensures their work on the streets has the greatest impact. These management committees are part of a broader structure that we have established. The committees involve local authorities and community leaders to coordinate the plans to address the acute problems faced by street children across several of the worst hit areas of the city.

The centres use this as a platform to hold open days, with assistance from War Child, which bring in the local community to gain their support and foster their responsibility for the children we work with. This has been particularly effective in overcoming the stigma that the children live with. It also enables us to help place the older children we provide vocational training for in employment.

Most importantly, through this wider community engagement we have been able to enroll senior policemen and judges who have been particularly helpful in resolving cases where the children we work with have come into conflict with the law.

And coming into conflict with law can be a brutal experience for street children.

Over the next 12 months we hope to increase the number of children we can offer protection to by extending our support to more centres for street children. I hope you will be able to join us in this mission by learning more about what we do and offering support where you can.

Read Mark's previous blog

Nobility, corruption and conflict in the heart of Congo

admin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:43:25 +0100

In the last of his blogs from Democratic Republic of Congo War Child's CEO Mark Waddington looks at life in the capital Kinshasa and the war that has left it severely impoverished.

The most spectacular event in Kinshasa is the daily arrival of the train from the sprawling shanty of N’Djili. The roof is packed with young men jostling for sitting space. The carriages, with no glass to fill the windows, are run by gangs which extort money from the passengers for standing room. The train crawls into Kinshasa and crawls back. Most of its passengers will put in 12 long hours, without lunch, sometimes without water, pursuing whatever cache of small business activities they can to put a meal on the table for their family - once a day.

Kinshasa is a busy city. It thrives with busy-ness. But it is a busy-ness borne out of survival and necessity, no longer the thumping heart of central Africa.

Thirty years of Mobutu’s kleptocracy, through which the army, police and civil service continually fed off the people, left a moribund state that provided no architecture of opportunity. No platform upon which to craft a life, no matter how modest, on your own terms. It was a situation that was propped up by western interests as part of the Cold War, in fear of the Soviet and then Cuban influence in neighbouring Angola.

Ultimately, after investing in its descent into corruption, the west put Congo out to pasture.

The Congolaise are barely surprised by this. On the back of Belgian colonisation, which saw 10 million people brutally murdered and many more with hands and arms chopped off by the legions of rubber companies, they were not really expecting the west to turn round and offer them development. We had no further use for them. The Soviet threat left and so did the scaffolding that kept in place the corruption of their pro-west government. The only government they had. And Kinshasa was stabbed to its heart.

The stage was set for a brutal war that involved 7 countries, and tore apart what remained of Congo’s infrastructure. By recent estimates it has left 5.4 million dead. The biggest loss of life since the Second World War. Current estimates suggest that 1,300 people are dying every day as a consequence of the war.

The conflict has aggravated an already acute poverty, and it has unraveled the social fabric that enabled people to make ends meet. Unemployment is massive. Child mortality is the ninth highest in the world. In a country that is rich in people, mineral resources and forest resources, with a huge hydro-electric potential and the possibility of an agricultural productivity that would more than feed every Congolaise.

Kinshasa itself was once known as Beau Belle for its high life, boulevards, designer clothes shops and vibrant economy. Now it is characterised by open sewers, rotting debris and slums. Children are accused of witchcraft because they have lost their parents to AIDS and their extended family can’t feed another mouth. There are 20,000 street children. All live with the threat of beatings, murder and rape. Sexual violence is extreme and staggering. For many women, survival sex is the norm.

But the heart of this city still beats, albeit faintly, beneath the human tragedy of war and corruption. The resourcefulness of the many, in a time of such need, is fuelled by the generosity of the many. As the suffering persists so too does the strength of this spirit.

This is a city where many people have nothing, and yet, they are still prepared to give. Even now, this nobility defines Kinshasa.

More on War Child's work in Democratic Republic of Congo

War Child's CEO Mark Waddington In Kinshasa

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:21:04 +0100

Frere Maino

"In a partnership with War Child that's now been running for four years, the Frere Maino centre in Kinshasa houses around 40 boys ranging from 8 - 15 years of age. With War Child's help the centre has recently been refurbished with new beds, furniture, electrics, shower and toilet facilities as well as a new roof and septic tank. The children are also enjoying a wide variety of entertainment facilities such as a games room including table football and a TV."

"Aside from our help in the refurbishment of the centre, War Child has also invested heavily in the training of the centre's staff in areas such as child care, basic hygiene and safety and also reintegration techniques. Through this partnership the social, educational and behavioural issues that many of Kinshasa's children are burdnened with are now being addressed - a process that has seen all of Frere Maino's boys enter mainstream education."

"We're also heavily involved in local advocacy, promoting an understanding of the problems these kids face in the wider community. This is all part of the War Child philosphy - to encourage the community to work with the children and develop a more positive attitude towards them."

"We've also involved some of the centre's staff and children in a broader committee across the city, making for a stronger voice and allowing them to pass on their knowledge and ideas. Investing in the local community in this way means that the community comes together as a more unified unit."

Listening Posts

"One of the offshoots of this improved structure within the community is the 'Listening Posts', an initiative run by the centre's staff where they work directly with some of Kinshasa's 20,000+ street children. The staff give advice to these children on issues such as health and safety and encourage them to pass on their knowledge to other children. It's a peer-to-peer referral programme whereby the children tell us if there is anyone in particular danger or at particular risk. We can then immediately intervene and help the child whose suffering would otherwise have gone unnoticed."

The end result of this is that the kids become an integral part of the entire protection programme.

"It's all part of investing in the child as the primary agent of their own protection."