Financial feedback January - March

Dear all,

As you can read on our website, we report on what's been done at each of our partner projects financially on a monthly basis.

So here it goes!

In January - March for Umthombo funds have been spent on:

- A car
A new car (Peogeot 206) has been purchased so outreach & advocacy teams can go around town.

- Carpeting of the Safe Space and other developments around the centre.

- Expanding Safe Space
In six months time the city of Durban will decide how to 'handle' the issue of street people (including children). What is emerging is that if there are no 'alternatives' they will round up the children and adults forcefully and put them in a makeshift 'tent city' in a township, so that visiting tourists (for FIFA 2010 world cup) will not know of their existence.
Interventions similar to this have happened many times before and always ended up traumatising children and violating their rights. Many children have been sexually and physically abused during such interventions in the past. The city intends to 'clean the streets' for the world cup and will let nothing get in the way.

Umthombo believes in empowering children to be able to leave the streets through therapeutic interventions that are in the best interest of the child and take seriously the trauma that all street children suffer in varying degrees. Umthombo does not see the children as an embarrassment, or simply a 'problem' to society but victims who desperately need assistance, love, therapeutic care, empowerment and a way out of street-life.

Over the last year Umthombo has been developing a 2010 plan to ensure the protection of street children during this period but also to ensure that the children are empowered to be able to leave the streets-life and be reintegrated into community-life. The most important development of this has been the Safe Space: the first ever therapeutic drop-in centre for street children in Durban. This has seen Umthombo increase the number of children it gets out of street-life in a month already. All the programs are run by a team of fully qualified social workers and child and youth care workers and led by a senior social worker with over ten years of experience with street children. Be More has been integral in enabling Safe Space to become a reality as many of Be More's volunteers have been based working there and some of their funds have helped to develop the centre.

Umthombo realises that they need to have their full infrastructure set-up and all their program developments completed within six months in order to be able to provide a compassionate alternative plan and a sanctuary for street children during 2010. The building next to Safe Space is huge and available. Leasing this, the Safe Space will nearly triple in size. What is crucial about this is that it will enable Umthombo to develop a nighttime facility for street children in order to protect them and lead them through the process of leaving the streets. The social working team will be working with them intensively to ensure that they don't live in the centre forever but genuinely become reintegrated with communities.

Umthombo has sent in an grant application to Be More for assistance in funding the rent of this extra building, which they received, since this provides a seminal moment for Umthombo and probably the most important six months in their life.


Any input you might have regarding these reports is more than welcome.

Kind regards,

Jetske