Kwetu Haven: A Safe Space for Reuniting Children and Families
Around 8 in 10 children in orphanages are not orphans. The reality is, children living in difficult circumstances are driven from home for many reasons.
Food insecurity ranks among one of the top reasons leading to institutionalized care for children (UNICEF, 2014). That report concluded: “It has been argued that families of most children in CCIs are poverty-stricken, and fail to adequately provide necessities such as food, health and education to their children.
Other reasons children become separated from primary caretakers include:
Abandonment
Abusive home environments
Substance misuse
Peer influence
Political and social circumstances, such as war and other conflicts
Many other
At nisria, we’ve worked with misplaced children since 2016, and have reunited more than 450 youth through our rescue rehab program. We’ve heard many stories from these children, in unimaginable situations.
One of our special aid cases includes a 15-year-old girl who was pregnant and because of this, she faced rejection and stigma from her family.; we took her in, made sure she’s fine and were able to relocate her to a home that caters to such unique situations.
Another boy who stayed with us recently left his home and spent the next month walking for about 150 miles, in search of his mother who had remarried and moved far away. Honestly, the boy didn’t know exactly where his mother was; we were able to care for him in our new space while waiting to reunite him with a family member who would be a good fit.
More About Our Rescue Program
We are beyond grateful to launch our Kwetu Haven, a safe home for rescued children. This home provides a comfortable space to transfer children instead of having them stay in a jail cell through the local police department, which is how misplaced children’s cases usually start. Often these youth can spend days or months in jail cells, alongside criminals and unfortunately sometimes treated as such.
By partnering with the local police department, we are able to transfer children to our Kwetu Haven instead. Kwetu Haven provides a separate, safe space that we are staffing so that kids feel comforted, cared for, and supported in times of crisis.
Our space has 3 rooms and a garden. Our staff, Mama Njambi, lives on-site to be available when a child is in need of shelter. We are currently working to fund appropriate beds and furniture, plants for the garden and so forth. Since securing this space, we helped 8 children in the first month of operation - children who fortunately didn’t have to spend a night in a cell.
Over the years, our team has rescued and reconnected more than 450 kids! We hope to continue to do so AND continue to improve the experience for the children and their families.
The Goal
Our goal with this program is always to reconnect children and families. This may mean finding extended family members who are a suitable fit and welcoming to the child. This can be a lengthy process, and careful reintegration is important.
While orphanages may have staff with positive intentions, the environment is not the best for maximum development. Children who experience chronic stress and other emotional factors associated with orphanages show dramatically decreased brain activity compared to those never institutionalized. (Harvard) This is why work to reintegrate children into supportive family environments is key, and thankfully many children’s homes focus on this as an end goal: a monitoring survey of 102 reintegrated children found that 74.5% were living with members of the extended family. (UNICEF, 2017)
“The family is the best place for a child and efforts should be made to enable a child to remain or return to his parents or close family members.” (UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children)
Hope and Homes for Children is an organization that works to end orphanages and instead help other organizations improve reintegration practices to improve outcomes for everyone. These are the benefits they list to reuniting kids with families vs. permanent institutionalization:
Reintegration back into their family or community provides a child with a sense of identity and belonging, both of which are critical for a child’s wellbeing;
Family and community provide long-term protection and support throughout a child’s life that Children’s Homes are unlikely to be able to match;
It is important for the child to learn their mother tongue language because this allows them to integrate into their community. However, Children’s Homes may not have staff from the same tribe who can support the child with this;
Reintegration reduces the risk that a child may become institutionalized;
Although Children’s Homes may provide excellent care, children living in Homes are still set apart as different to their peers who are living with their families and communities;
Reintegration means that many more children can benefit from the care offered by a Children’s Home since the turnover is much faster;
Reintegration encourages families and communities to take responsibility for their children, reducing dependency on organizations, and increases children’s access to inheritance;
Reintegration places children in the ‘real world’ and gives them firsthand experience of family dynamics that a Children’s Home may not be able to reproduce.
Support Kwetu Haven
We are currently working to fund appropriate beds and furniture, plants for the garden and so forth. Your donation can help us improve our space to provide quality care for the children we serve while we work to reunite families.