We're Done!!!!

This has been a success! We raised about $106 when we were tabling. Then individual trip participants and their families made donations that totaled about $183. Patrick set up a Z-Burger fundraiser for us, which will just add additional donations for Fountain of Hope in general. So we earned enough to buy mosquito nets for all 40 of the kids!!!! I am very proud of our group and how quickly we were able to get this done, and how willing people were to help these kids. It's great to see people join together to help these kids who already have so much less than us. So thank you to everyone who helped and tabled and donated money! We hope to send the money to RAPIDS as soon as possible so that the kids can get the nets as soon as possible.

Interning at AFJN was an interesting experience. I had a lot of great opportunities and learned a lot about street children in various parts of Africa. On Monday I went to a forum with the new envoy to Sudan. It was really disappointing to hear him say, "I don't know what to do. If you have ideas let me know, but right now we are just going to keep putting pressures on them and see if they cooperate." I had hoped that he would have at least an idea of what to do, but I guess he's new so he needs a chance to prove himself. Hopefully he will come up with a new idea soon though, because something needs to be done sooner rather than later.
-Katie

Nearing the End

So Z-Burger has been avoiding our calls and we haven't been able to set up a fundraiser. But hopefully the money we collected through tabling and the money we collected from just our group member donations will be enough to buy all 40 nets. We contacted RAPIDS and asked if they still had the nets and could give them to us at the same price so hopefully that will all work out. I'm kind of sad that Z-Burger gave us such a hard time but hopefully we got enough on our own.

I also finished my article on street children in the Congo. I learned a lot of interesting but sad things that can go on, even in the church. A lot of times the children are forced onto the street because they are suspected of being witches and so they are beaten by their families and forced to undergo extremely painful exorcisms by their churches. Bahati told me that if someone has a dream that their child told the devil about them they will take their own children to be exorcised. He said the process sometimes includes a hot iron being pressed to the child's back until they confess to being a witch, but even if that happens they are still beaten when bad things happen to the family. It is sad that a lot of organizations turn a blind eye to these children, but hopefully more and more organizations will be aware of the problems and allow these children to get their childhoods back.
-Katie

Next Fundraiser

Unfortunately every time I have called Z-Burger in the last week the man who I have to talk to is not there and they don't know when he will coming back, which is definitely frustrating. I really want to raise the rest of the money and buy the nets for the kids because they need them so much and it's important that they get them sooner rather than later. So hopefully when I call tomorrow I'll be able to talk to him and get something set up.

For my internship I get to write another article about street children, this time in the Congo. Bahati, one of the permanent staff members, is from Congo and just returned from a trip home and said he'd give me information for my article so right now I'm working on that. On Wednesday we are getting a tour of the Capitol with one of Fr. Rocco's friends that works there so that should be fun, even though we have to meet at 8:20 a.m.

Almost there!

After three days of tabling we raised about $106, which buys about 15 of the 40 nets that we need for the children of Fountain of Hope! I am so excited that we got that much of a response from the AU community and it is great to see that people really want to help these amazing kids out! Three people who went on the trip with me to Zambia also donated part of their refund check, which is amazing! I'm not sure how much that totals to yet but we are definitely off to an awesome start! We still need about $174 but the money we raised just from sitting in MGC is a great start. Our next step is to try and figure out another fundraiser to do, maybe Z-Burger or something like that that can raise a lot of money quickly since there aren't a lot of weeks left in the semester. But I'm still hopeful we can raise enough money and maybe a little bit extra to help these kids!
-Katie

Come visit us!!!!

We are tabling today in MGC, 11-2 so everyone should come visit and donate change!!! We've raised about $58 so far from tabling Tuesday and Wednesday. Even though we have to raise about $280 it's a good start for us. We haven't made a lot right now (Wednesday at 12:23) but hopefully by 2 it will pick up. We're also planning another fundraiser so hopefully we can raise the majority of the money before the end of the semester. People from our trip are also donating money which is great and is really helping, but hopefully other people will be interested and get involved. That's all for now. Come visit us in MGC right now!!!
-Katie

Slideshow!

So this is a video slideshow I made that we will be showing while we table this week. But since we can't really play sound in the always loud MGC I figured I'd upload it here too so that you could hear it. It's pictures of the kids that I took and some other people on my trip took and sound from the video that I am pretty sure I already posted of the kids dancing, but is still pretty cool to listen to. Enjoy!

-Katie

Tabling

After a very stressful week of arguing with University Event Scheduling and sending tons of e-mails to everyone in my group, we can finally start collecting money! We are going to be in MGC on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 11-2. So come visit us!

We're going to have a slideshow with pictures of the kids and if I have time tomorrow I'm going to make some hand-outs about it and try to put it in Today @ AU. But since I just found out, about ten minutes ago, I hope it will all work! Hopefully we'll see you this week!

We can start!!!!

So we've been working on figuring out ways to actually support these kids and get the mosquito nets that they desperately need. We finally have a game plan and we're going to start tabling next week to raise money. Patrick contacted some organizations around D.C. but none of them really wanted to donate money to us, which is understandable since they all have their own issues that they need money for. Courtney's high school is collecting money and her mom is placing a jar where she works, which is a good start. At the end of this week we're going to work on putting a slideshow together and making some posters to raise awareness and to try to let people know we're going to be collecting money for this so hopefully it works. But at least it's a start. When we hear back from Isaac, one of the teachers at Fountain of Hope, we'll add more information about the kids but for now we'll work with what we have.

I finally got to write an article about the issue of street children for AFJN and it's going to be published in their next newsletter. I also posted a link to this blog so people could learn more, so if you're an AFJN supporter and you're reading this -- Welcome and I hope you are willing to support our project and donate a few dollars, any amount is perfect! I really liked the way the article turned out because it's something I really care about and I wanted to make it perfect. After it's printed I'll post it up here or post a link to it or my other article, which is about the ICC and not so much about street children.

I'll update this next week after we meet and let everyone know how we're doing with the tabling! We have the support of the Community Service Center so we know we can table and nothing is stopping us except the piles of homework that we all have to do, but I'm definitely willing to set that all aside and put a lot of time into helping these amazing kids. :)

See you next week!
-Katie

Slow Start

We have all these ideas for the project but as of now we're on hold because we haven't heard back from Fountain of Hope. We really want to get them involved and get the kids involved because there's only so much we can say about them or even know about them, it's best for people to get to know these kids for who they really are. So right now we're waiting and hopefully we're going to hear from them soon. If we don't hear from them by the end of next week I think we're going to start the project anyways from what we remember and the pictures we have and our memories of them, it's not ideal but it's what we have and we're going to have to make the best of it.

I'm also interning for Africa Faith and Justice Mission this semester and I've decided to do my research there on street children to raise awareness about the real situation. I feel like people know there are a lot of AIDS orphans in Africa but I don't think they know how bad the problem truly is or the lengths these kids go through to survive.

I know when we were in Zambia one evening we were walking back to our hostel with dinner for the whole group because everyone was sick of cooking and just wanted something simple. So we were walking back and this group of kids started following us begging. We told them no, which was really hard, and told them to go to Fountain of Hope for food and care and our leader gave them directions. Then they got worse so we said "Choka," which means go away in Nyanja. They followed us all the way to the street where our hostel was and then our leader, who had lived in Zambia for 3 years, told them that they had no respect which is a huge deal because respect is extremely important to them. The kids stopped and yelled things at us, but they weren't following us more. All of a sudden I felt something hit the back of my leg and looked back and the kids were throwing rocks at us. Then one of them took out a glass Coke bottle and sniffed it and put it into his pocket. Our leader told us they were high and he was sniffing glue because then they don't feel cold or hunger. But this wasn't just a chance encounter with some kids who were getting high, they felt like they needed this to live and get through the night.

This is why I want to do my project on street children and raise awareness about it to the members of AFJN. They're kids, they deserve a childhood and a place to eat and sleep and a family and school, they shouldn't be forced to sniff glue or sewage, if they can't get the glue, to make it through the night. And there are millions of them in Zambia alone. There are organizations that are trying to help, but I think people only ever hear about AIDS and AIDS orphans in orphanages. In reality there aren't that many orphanages and there are too many kids, in the US people would be appalled, but in Africa it is the reality every day. So why don't those kids deserve to be watched over too? Why does our prevention of street children stop at the US borders?
-Katie

The Very Beginning

My project for the service learning is to help with a project I was already planning on working on. I went on the Alternative Break Trip to Zambia this winter and it was absolutely amazing. So now for our post-trip activism we've decided to send one of the organizations mosquito nets. Fountain of Hope takes in street children and feeds, educates and shelters them and lets them basically be kids again. Most of the kids are there for only three months while their real or extended families are located, some of the parents have died of AIDS, but some have been there their entire lives. Some of the kids ran away from their homes for various reasons and others were forced to live on the street because their parents died. In Zambia girls are more valued because they will do the cooking and cleaning and care for the other children, but boys traditionally do nothing and are viewed as burdens on the extended families. So Fountain of Hope takes them in and they have beds there, unfortunately there are 40 beds and only 2 mosquito nets. Malaria is a huge problem and is the number one killer of people in Zambia, even above AIDS, so getting these nets for the kids is crucial. Our plan to raise money for the nets is to have students or faculty or whoever "sponsor" a child. We'd give them information about a child and a picture and they could donate all or part of the cost for the mosquito net for that child. I think this is a good way for people here to get involved because they can see the children affected and have a reminder of what they did to help out a greater cause. I hope that this can be made a little bigger and that maybe we can partner with an organization and donate more nets to similar organizations. But it needs to be taken one step at a time, and we are at the very beginning.

Today we have officially started plans to send the mosquito nets for Fountain of Hope. Our student leader from the Alternative Break Trip contacted RAPIDS, who is willing to front the costs to mail the nets to them and we can get them for about $6-7. Although we still have to contact netsfor life to see what they can do, I think we might go with this group. They would buy the nets from a company in Lusaka (the capital of Zambia where we lived for 2 weeks) and deliver them to the kids at Fountain of Hope which is in Kamwala, a suburb of Lusaka. We're also e-mailing Fountain of Hope, they only have one computer for the whole organization, and seeing if maybe the kids can fill out a paper so people can get to know who they really are instead of just what we remember. For now there's not much we can do until we hear from netsforlife and Fountain of Hope, but hopefully once that happens we can start and things will move along pretty well.

Here's some video of the Fountain of Hope kids and students from our trip dancing and singing that I filmed while we were there to help you get to know some of them. The older ones are the educators and outreach workers who go and find the kids off the street. I hope you enjoy and get to know the kids we're trying to help a little bit better.
-Katie