Changing Lives Through Friendship

Nakuru, Kenya- The Community of Sant’egidio, in the town of Nakuru,

come together every Saturday in a small bungalow house to meet up

with street children from all corners of town.

The main aim of these meetings is to empower the

street children by giving them a sense of belonging as C.K (a volunteer) explains.

When they attend the meetings, the children first take a shower, clean their clothes or

sometimes get new ones from donations and then share a meal together. During their ‘clean up’the volunteers take time to know what has been going on in their lives in the past week. This

enables the children to open up about critical issues they may be facing in their day to day life.

In doing this, the volunteers find ways to assist them in overcoming their problems.

Michael, one of the volunteer states that the street children are the most pushed aside

community in the world today as they do not have a voice. One of the challenges they have

encountered in empowering these young people is being marginalized by the society around

them. This is because street children carry of being the labels of being ‘thieves’, ‘dirty’,

‘rebellious’ and so on.

Michael explains that on one account, while planning a Christmas gathering (lunch) with the

children, they faced a ''major problem''. The security team and the people around the area

where the event was to be held, were not comfortable with the idea of ‘A gang of street

children gathered together in one place’.This is because they were worried of being robbed.

They were later assigned another area where they were allowed to host their Christmas lunch.

The stigmatization does not stop there. On another account while conducting the interviews,

one of the children reach out to me and claimed that the shopkeeper refused to sell to him as

he is a ‘STREET KID’.

However, despite these challenges, Michael mentions that through this community, they have

been able to help more than 5000 street children across the country to “live a dignified life”.

Apart from giving them food and clothing, they also assist the children to find their way back

home, to acquire essential life skills, providing them with guidance and counseling , assisting

those with drug addictions and also help the older demographic to find employment.

“The key in doing these things is by first developing a friendship with them” Michael says.

He states that “It is so much easier to correct a friend that a person you just met”. He

emphasizes that seeing change in these children is a process as no one can be a transformed

person overnight.

Through the meetings they hold and the time they share, the children get mentors and build

relationships which results to behavioral change. Michael states that the aim of their

community is to “Live out their Christianity”, by assisting those in distress.

Through their programs, they also want to encourage the society to lend a helping hand to the most stigmatized people in our communities such as the street children and the elderly.