Misisi

Greetings loyal readers (I think we're up to 15 professed readers of this blog, although the "followers" list to the right only says 5),

Below is a report about a new program we've been working on in Misisi, a slum in Lusaka. This place really is as bad as described (trust me, I wrote it)


Misisi Compound is notoriously known as the worst and most neglected slum in Lusaka. With one hundred thousand inhabitants and no public schools, police stations, or health clinics, this perception appears quite accurate. There are no sewage systems to speak of. Those residents that are not fortunate enough to have a pit latrine close to home instead use the ponds that are scattered throughout the compound. These mini ‘lakes’, often with the foundations of houses lining the edges, have small outhouses built above them so that waste conveniently drops directly into the water below. This lack of proper hygiene, coupled with the overwhelming HIV/AIDS problem in the country, has led to in a high proportion of sicknesses and deaths, resulting in scores of orphans. Some of these orphans have a grandparent or other relative that tries to care for them, even though many of them barely able to care for themselves, but even this is not always an option. Up to one thousand children in Misisi live in “child headed families” - orphaned brothers and sisters who depend only on each other for survival.
Because there are no government schools in the area, a system of sixteen community-run “schools” has been developed for those students who can’t afford private schooling and are unable to travel to those schools further away. These schools are run only with sporadic, small grants from the Ministry of Education, meaning that all teachers are unpaid and facilities and materials are incredibly insufficient. A two hundred and eighty student school can be housed in a three by six meter structure, with the students coming to class in two to three hour increments throughout the day.
The Chairman of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Committee from Misisi summed up the situation facing his compound: “There are many orphans here, but in reality, we are all orphans. The OVC Committee, the schools, the families - we are forgotten. The government and the NGOs have all abandoned us. We are alone.”


Kids Alive’s “Families Together” Program in Misisi
Often in the struggle to care for the thousands of orphans in Zambia, children are placed in an orphanage program despite having a loving family member who wants to care for them. This is because this guardian is simply unable to meet the needs of the child due to a lack of resources. Many aging grandmothers are caring for their orphaned grandchildren with little or no money, so, instead of watching the children suffer, they search for a person or program that can adequately meet the child’s needs.
Kids Alive’s “Families Together” program in Misisi seeks to combat this problem through providing a unique and thoroughly holistic model of care. By merging the Care Center model that has been established successfully in several Kids Alive fields with a more ‘family-based focus’, our program aims to provide optimum benefit to the orphans and vulnerable children within Misisi Compound. Our goal is to enable and empower these children’s guardians so that the children can stay at home, rather than enter the already overcrowded orphanage system in Zambia. The plan is to begin modestly, with 25 children from the most dire of circumstances supported, but with the goal of expanding as funding, staffing, and facilities allow.
This program will have a multi-faceted approach in order to holistically meet the needs of the selected children. The child will receive a daily meal, medical care, clothing and the supplies needed for school attendance, daily tutoring, spiritual and emotional encouragement, and opportunities to interact with other students. There will also be an intensive focus on supporting the family of the child in order to enable them to play an active role in establishing a stable, positive, and healthy environment for the child to grow up in. These needs will be met through providing clothing and foodstuffs for the family, loans or grants that can be used by guardians for training or income-generating activities, or repairing or improving their homes. This program will also target the child-headed families by providing basic needs so that the oldest brothers and sisters can return to school instead of having to work odd jobs in order to feed their younger siblings.
Please pray for this exciting new program as it develops – that it will make an enormous difference in the lives of needy children and their families in this desperately poor part of Zambia!


Scenes from Misisi: