amos trust

Amos Trust's involvement in South Africa has focussed on the plight of South Africa's street children for the last 15 years. Street children are the innocent victims of South Africa’s acute poverty, of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and of community breakdown and endemic violence.

President Thabo Mbeki describes South Africa as having “two economies” – a vibrant first world economy and a much larger rural and urban economy where 35% of the population experience extreme poverty. The 2006 UNAIDS report estimates South Africa has 1.4 million AIDS orphans and 250,000 children under fifteen live with HIV /AIDS. Conservative estimates suggest that over 65% of street children have HIV/AIDS.

Since 2004, Amos Trust's support in South Africa has focussed on a pioneering new approach established by Tom Hewitt and Mandi Ngantweni-Hewitt: Umthombo Street Children. Umthombo is a project predominantly run by former street children. It is based in Durban, South Africa, the South African city with the highest street child population, estimated at between 2,000 and 6,000. Umthombo was established to break the log jam in the development and delivery of policies and programmes for street children. For the first time, former street children are playing a lead role in developing new responses, in challenging public misconceptions, in exposing the violent and abusive treatment of street children and in raising awareness of the reasons why children are on the streets.

Many of these children feel that they have no option but to run away to the streets:

"I grew up on the rubbish dumps in East London, South Africa. My mother and my step-father were both alcoholics and there was a lot of fighting at home. There was so much fighting when they were drunk that people in the community we lived in would take advantage of us, and that was why we started spending time on the streets. I was 10 when I first started living on the streets. In the day we would beg for food or money and in the night we would sleep on the pavements. It was not a great place to be, but it was much better than being at home. At home you got abuse from the older guys - sexual, physical, mental abuse - and life was a constant threat." Mandi Ngantweni-Hewitt

To read more about Umthombo's work, go to: Umthombo Street Children

To receive regular updates by email about the work that Amos Trust supports in South Africa, contact Chris Rose.