Our Father’s House
Project Information
Reuniting children with their families and providing needed support in education and counseling
Annual Goal: $15,500.00
Year to Date Gifts: $16,545.00
Describe the need affecting community
Tarime, a small, but quickly growing town in Tanzania has a population of roughly 60 children and 20 families living on the streets. There is currently no other ministry or NGO addressing this need in the town. As more and more families seek out towns for work this program will only continue to grow. There is also a growing number of businesses that are exploiting street children by having them steal scrap metal and other things and reselling them resulting in many street children ending up in jail where they are not separated from the adult prison population.
How will this Advance project help to address the need?
Our Father’s House has been operating for three years now and in that time have reunited almost 40 children with their families and have continued to provided needed support in education and counseling. The staff have also started to address the issue of street children with the government, including drawing their attention to businesses that are exploiting the children. Our Father’s House is currently working on expanding services to include family strengthening to make sure more children do not return to the streets. The ministry has also started a youth employment project which works with older street children (15-18) to help them develop employable skills and get off of the streets through their own work.
Describe the primary goal of the project
Our Father’s House wants to see street children accepted back into the community starting with their own families. How a person starts in life is very important. The goal therefore is to help street children have a better foundation to their lives. Our Father’s House wants to do this by reducing the number of street children through reunification, family strengthening, empowerment of older youth, and community sensitization.
Describe the change you would like to see in the community as a result of this Advance project
Success of the project will be measured quantitatively through case management work by tracking how many children successfully leave and stay off of the streets. Success will also be measured qualitatively based on the actions of local churches, government institutions, and local businesses to reduce violence towards street children and become more engaged in the process of helping them.