Tushinde helps children and communities protect themselves.

Marie: Tushinde’s in-country technical advisor was selected for a secondment to ECPAT where she coordinated and lead the Nairobi workshop. This sensitised 13 organisations and the government department, all of whom work with children in Nairobi. ECPAT is an international organisation that aims to combat child sexual exploitation. It started in Thailand in the early 1990’s after researchers for a tourism consortium first identified the problem of child prostitution in South East Asia. It has since grown and has offices all around the world. Tushinde was pleased to be involved in this as we have encountered many cases of child sexual abuse and also sense a real vulnerability in the children we work with for a multitude of reasons. The main objective of the training was to reinforce the knowledge of community professionals on sexual violence against children. This is a major issue faced by children and their families in Kenya and worldwide, especially in densely populated, low-income areas. It trained the social workers in a ‘’self-protection’’ programme to share directly with children and their families. The programme the trainees learnt to implement aims to help parents and guardians fulfil their protective roles. Of equal importance it also aims to increase awareness in both guardians and children of situations where a child could be at risk of sexual abuse. Along with all the other social workers, child protection officers and community health professionals, Beth and Ann, Tushinde’s social workers, received training certificates and a set of materials such as training manuals, flash cards and brochures. At Tushinde, we have several cases per year of children sexual abuse and we feel that prevention measures are very important. Our children in the community are vulnerable to sexual abuse for a multitude of reasons. We were very glad to be involved in such training and could see its importance. Our social workers also learned more on reaction mechanisms and how to react professionally to a case. Beth and Anne shone in the training; not only were they enthusiastic and eager to learn, but they could also share some of their prior knowledge and experiences. It was a great opportunity for them to skill share and network with other professionals. This kind of training also helps raise Tushinde’s profile in our area of intervention and allows us to improve our networking at the local level. Following the training, we implemented the programme with a first group of 15 children of Tushinde aged between 9 to 12; the sessions took place in Mathare North primary school on 2 days and both Beth and Ann demonstrated their ability to teach children those useful skills. The evaluation showed that the children learned well and overall they were very participative. More groups of children and parents will be organised in 2014.

Finding Faith

In my 37 years in the UK, despite being a nurse and working in inner city London, I didn't know personally of a single child who had gone missing for days. I didn't know a family who had had a child murdered. I didn't know of any children who had been raped. We all know it happens in Britain as we read about it in the press, but it doesn't regularly happen on a scale where the children concerned are the sons or daughters of friends or colleagues. Since being in Kenya I have encountered first hand three young girls who have been raped, one family whose daughter had been raped and murdered and three children who have been missing for days. The first of those three had a happy ending; the boy had lost his friends walking back from church. After wandering for a while an old lady took him in and eventually, after five days, he was re-united with his parents. The second child was a ten year old girl, she was abducted by a man who took her to his house, but she managed to escape. Her story is harrowing; she describes body parts of children on shelves in the room she was locked in. They never caught the man who captured her and the family have moved to a different part of Nairobi and want to put the whole disturbing incident behind them. The third child I know who has gone missing disappeared a week ago today. Faith lives in the slums of Mathare. Her parents were murdered in the post election violence in 2008 and since then, she and her five siblings have lived with their Aunt and Uncle in an area of Mathare called Kosovo; notorious for it’s violence and insecurity. Faith’s Aunt has six children of her own and all fourteen of them live in a 10’x10’ room. Rent in Kosovo is low, which is why Faith’s family have to live there. Faith’s uncle is a security guard for a local company. He gets paid 7,000 kshs a month (about £60 or $90). The Aunt looks for small jobs every day; washing clothes or cleaning shop fronts. This week though, they have had to go hungry as she has been wandering everywhere with Faith’s grainy photo asking if anyone has seen her. The background to this story is where the injustice lies. On the 24th of April this year, a woman in the neighbourhood tricked Faith into following her to a room where she was raped by a man. Faith told her Aunt who got the woman arrested, but the man escaped. It is well known that men from wealthier areas come to Kosovo and other slum areas looking for sex with children. Someone paid a bribe at the jail and the woman was set free. She triumphantly told the Aunt ‘I have rich people behind me, you won’t get me’. After being raped, Faith was taken to the clinic where she was given all the correct treatment to lower her risk of getting HIV or any other STD. Her family kept a close eye on her, but they let their guard down for a few minutes last Sunday and she was gone. We have been to the police station where they have recorded the missing child. On the notice board in the reception there were handwritten notes on scraps of paper for six other missing children. Two six year old girls and four boys aged 1,2,3 and 9 years. The disinterest of the officer was unsettling. Since recording Faith’s disappearance last Sunday (the family went to the police station straight away) they have done nothing to follow up the case. They haven’t been to the house, or interviewed neighbours. They haven’t searched anywhere. We are trying our best. We have printed out a flyer and posters. Today the Aunt and I put the poster up at bus stops, inside buses and gave the leaflets out to passers by. I left the Aunt heading to a different side of the slums to do the same. I have printed out more, so she can do the same tomorrow. What more can we do? When the justice system favours the rich instead of the wronged and the paedophile above the innocent child, what hope is there for Faith? We will continue and, who knows, perhaps we will find a policeman who will help us with our plight and actually start searching the area and arresting the right people and keep them in jail. Maybe then, we’ll get our Faith back.