work

Perhaps some of you are wondering what exactly I'm doing here. Because until now there I have not written much about my work. You know that I work with street children, but further than that ...




Well, this is quite difficult to describe my work in a few words. I think the best description is that I stick my nose in everywhere. People who know me well will have no problem to believe this.

When I started the job was very simple and consisted of two parts: help where you can assist and help the organization to get to the next level, professional.

I started with some administrative support work for the management, tutoring to children and playing with the children.The first and last were not such problem, but teaching! I learned at least that I'm not cut out for teacher. Individual tutoring goes quite well, but in groups, a disaster. Of course it did not help that I barely spoke the language.




Slowly but surely my role is changing into a more administrative/ support role. So I am now the information officer, which means I started posting on the face book site and must try to contribute information to the website, which is maintained in the Netherlands. I am also the monitoring and evaluation officer. This means that I actually have a right to stick my nose in everywhere. For this, I need to write different policies, plans and reports and check that people do what they are supposed to
do and whether the filing and reports are correct. In the event that this is not the case, I need to take action. Interesting work, especially since as far as this is concerned there is a big difference in the culture between Tanzania and the Netherlands. In Tanzania there is oral culture. Donors and professionalism ask for work according to a Western culture; in other words, paperwork. To
bring these two cultures together is occasionally quite challenging. And I also help with fundraising.
Because I do not want to do just office work (then I could as well have stayed in the Netherlands) I still do playing time with the children and I am responsible for the library. This change between jobs keeps the work fun.

I have deliberately chosen to not really be looking into the background of our children. My language skills are insufficient and the kids already have counselors dealing with their problems. I just want to treat children as children, because in the end that is what they are, just kids. 

For you guys to have some idea of ​​the background of our kids: mostly one-parent families, corporal punishment is widely accepted in this society, there is a lot of poverty so that a child cannot go to school but must somehow earn some money, if the single parent finds a new partner he/she is often unwilling to care for the children of a previous partner. Also, we deal with children whose parents /
guardians are deceased, whose guardians are drunk, living with 10 men in a room, etc. (in the picture is the grandfather of a boy who we have successfully reintegrated)




But we also have children who ran away because they have stolen money or other goods, they have poor school results, they have not complied with agreements and who are afraid of the punishment they can expect.

And street children have to deal with the stigmatization and abuse by the people at large, the police, other children. As a result, children learn that adults cannot be trusted. The street is their home and the other street children their families. This makes it difficult to get them off the street, especially if they have lived there for some time.




Now I do not want to give the impression that Tanzanians cannot provide for their children. We deal with a certain part of society make, that part which doesn’ t/can’t take good care of the kids. There are also plenty of families where it's going well, where the children go to school, where there is a loving home where there is enough food. But these are not the children with whom we work.