Orphans get a helping hand in Burundi
21 November 2008
When
15-year-old Maurice lost his father in 1999, the prospects looked bleak. Coming
from a very poor family, even having enough food to survive on seemed an
impossibility.
Sure enough, hunger soon struck and, out of desperation, Maurice's mother stole some bananas from the field in which she worked. Caught, she was fined more than she could pay and as a consequence became indebted to the field's owner. Not long afterwards she died, with the money owed still unpaid.
Maurice and his siblings' inheritance from their mother was small, little more than the house they lived in - and the debt she could never afford to settle. Seeing an easy opportunity to recover the debt, the landowner wasted no time in confiscating the house. Maurice and his young brothers were forced on to the street.
Alerted to the boys' plight, Noel, a member of a local child protection unit funded by DFID, contacted the landowner to try to resolve the dispute as amicably as possible. But the man would not budge. So Noel revealed the case to the media. What had been a local shame swiftly turned into an outrage on a much wider scale.
For the landowner, the embarrassment was too much to take and the house was eventually returned. Now, Noel and his colleagues are helping the brothers to make some much-needed home improvements. And across the country, thanks to the same DFID-backed programme, children like Maurice are being helped in a variety of other ways...
A decent start
The child protection unit that came to Maurice's aid was set up as part of the Nzokira programme, which is designed to help Burundi's many orphans and vulnerable children. As a consequence of civil war and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, around 500,000 of the country's children are thought to be without one or both parents.
Nzokira works across a range of areas to provide at-need children with a
decent start in life. As well as placing orphans with foster families (almost
400 so far), the programme has supplied uniforms and other materials for their schooling (over 26,000 provided
for the 2009 academic year). Aline Harerimana, a 13-year-old student from Mungwa Primary School in Gitega
province, was one of those to receive a brand new uniform.
"I went to school before Nzokira," she says, "but other children were always laughing at me because I didn't have nice clothes. They refused to play with me, and I was sad because I had no friends.
"In class, the teacher asked the student who shared the same bench with me to accept me, but still nobody talked to me. I didn’t play at all at school. I finally received a new uniform and now have friends. I am no longer discriminated against."
Building businesses
The
programme also assists children with healthcare
costs,
offers vocational training and helps them to save money and access credit.
Gloriose is one of the 15,000 people enrolled in community-based village savings and loans schemes
thanks to Nzokira.
Her credit and savings group - called "Dushigikirane", or "support each other" - provided her with a loan of $5 to start trading in bananas.
With the profits she made from her sales, she branched out into buying and selling soap. Then, with an additional loan, she expanded into the salt trade. With the money she earns from her growing business, Gloriose is now able to cover food and scholarship expenses for her household.
Facts and stats
- The Nzokira programme is a three-year programme which began in July 2006 and works in eight of Burundi’s 17 provinces.
- The programme was set up by Catholic Relief Services, CARE International and over ten local partner organizations.
- DFID is providing £5,150,000 of funding to Nzokira over three years.
