There are still many homeless children living on the streets of Nairobi, begging or taking on risky jobs to earn some money for food and clothing. The Children's Hope Home cannot take in or care for all the children on the streets of Nairobi, but there are many other children's aid organisations in Kenya that could and want to do so.
‘However, most organisations find it difficult to persuade children to leave the streets,’ says Duncan, who is an expert in this field. ‘There's a certain way you have to approach the kids on the street. You have to appeal to them. Play some street games, joke with them and speak their language, later you can ask them questions to find out who they are. Gaining their trust is not something that can be done the first time. There are different types of street children: some live with family, some have run away from home, some beg and some occasionally live on the street. Each of them needs to be dealt with differently.
As many of you may know, Duncan often goes out on the streets of Nairobi early in the morning with a group of volunteers and some of our adult children to bring breakfast to the street children in Nairobi. Through years of visiting these street children, many of them know Duncan and like him very much, and not once or twice has he managed to get a whole gang of street boys off the streets. Whilst we take a meal a day for granted, a meal once a week is a luxury for many children on the streets of Nairobi and gives Duncan and our volunteers the opportunity to approach the children several times and try to persuade them to leave the streets.
With the growing interest of our volunteers to participate more frequently in the feeding project, Children's Hope Home has developed the idea of Duncan's Donuts in the hope of raising enough money to support Duncan's noble cause of reaching and feeding 30 children at least once a week. In order to visit the children regularly, this project needs the support of volunteers and additional funds to buy donuts, bread, drinks and cover travelling costs. Keeping this project going will therefore be a big challenge, but it is also important to remind our children of where we started and how far we have come. In this way we can teach the children to think of others and volunteer in a very meaningful way. Please help us to promote this commitment.
You can find more information in the following video.