Uchira Children's Fund
Why Do We Need The Fund?
Poverty stops local families from being able to provide many of the basics we can all to often take for granted. School fee’s, medical care, housing and clothing, mattresses, and even daily meals can be a struggle that some parents and guardians, fail to manage here. Some children are even forced to labour and work to help feed themselves.
The fund offers one on one support for the children, by connecting each child with a sponsor, who can help by sharing the small monthly cost of school, medical care, nutritional support, and housing if needed, and with it a path out of the cycle of poverty and the suffering it can bring, that the children are caught in.
What Does It Cost To Support A Child Here?
To support a child here with access to full time education, medical care as and when needed, nutritional support if needed, amenities, such as a mattress to sleep on and solar light to do homework by, can cost as little as £3/$4 a week, you can begin to help with supporting a child in the community here, by clicking on the sponsor a child page above.
Who Are The Children?
All of the children in the children’s fund come from vulnerable home lives. Many have sadly lost one, or both parents to sickness or abandonment and separation. Some still live with both parents, but the parents are trapped in the cycle of poverty, and struggle to break free.
Many of our children have been involved in Child labour in one of its many forms. Mostly in our area, that form is stone breaking in the local quarries. However working in the fields and other casual labour is also very common with it.
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What Problems Do The Children Face?
The main issues children we assist face are common here. High rates of sickness due to hunger and lack of clean water and access to medical care, lack of education and thus opportunities, Child labour, abuse, HIV/AIDS, sleeping on the floor, homelessness, neglect, and nutritional deficiencies, are the core issues we aim to stamp out.
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How Do We Know About The Children?
We have a dedicated social work team who work out in the community, to identify children, and families in need. Working with Tanzanian social welfare, and also the local schools, we are called weekly to add new children to our database who are in need of urgent help.
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Why Not Bring The Children Into Our Care If They Have Lost Their Parents?
We know from experience that the best goal for children here, and in all developing countries, is to have the children live inside the community, and with it the society around them. Be that with friends of their deceased parents, or caring families in the community, or reuniting children with distant relatives. This should always be the first course of action for a child, alongside support from our social work team to ensure they are being well cared for.
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The Principles Of The Fund:
Uchira Children’s fund was initially the core, and entirety of Share Tanzania’s work here. It is in fact having the fund that helped us to realize the need for the children’s village, and centre for street involved children. Ironically it was visiting the children out in the community that began the start of the animal rescue with it.
The principle is a simple one, and one that should be known. It is better to support a child in the community, be they with their parents, or with a guardian or foster carer, than to immediately move a vulnerable child into the care of a children’s home.
It is true that a family home, and unit can not be substituted with a home. For all we work hard to create as much of a family environment and unit as possible at our children’s village, we still know that a true family unit is the best option, for all it is not always an option sadly.
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