Youth Center FONELISCO in Mwanza, Tanzania (Since 2025)
FONELISCO (Foundation of New Life for Street Children and Orphans) was founded in 1997 by social worker Joseph Mabinga Elias and has been registered as an NGO in Mwanza, Tanzania, since 2003. Initially starting as street outreach, Elias was able to rent a house with small donations, providing a home for the first children. Since 2006, FONELISCO has been located at its current site in Ilemela, where around 60 children and young people are cared for.
The reasons why children live on the streets are manifold: extreme poverty, loss of parents, severe family problems – many of the children in our care come from precarious circumstances and have already experienced trauma.
The goal of the home is to provide the children with a safe haven:
- Accommodation & Meals: Accommodation, three daily meals with typical African fare such as ugali, rice, or porridge. Education & Development: School attendance (primary, secondary, high school, and possibly university or vocational training) as well as creative activities, e.g., art, crafts, and other forms of support like art, made possible by covering school fees, uniforms, and materials.
- Psychosocial support: Many children receive counseling and support to process their traumatic experiences.
- Reintegration: Approximately 50 more children are reintegrated into their families and continue to receive financial support (e.g., for school supplies).
- Additional services: Nighttime street outreach to reach homeless children; traditional dance and drumming groups promote cultural expression and joy.
“New Land” project: FONELISCO owns approximately 1 hectare of land in Igombe near Lake Victoria – currently used for agriculture and planned as the future site of a new orphanage.
Youth Center Charité in Uvira, DR Congo (2016 -2024)
The Kinderhaus Charité has existed since 2001 in partnership with ChildFund Deutschland e.V. and the local aid organization OPDE Congo. What began as a cared-for living group with a few children is now a cared-for house with 40 former street children aged 6 to 14; of which approx. one third are refugee children from neighboring country Burundi.
There are many reasons for becoming a street child: children often leave the family out of sheer poverty in order to somehow survive on the street or they are forced to become child soldiers by marauding gangs – some the children in Kinderhaus Charité had this fate.
The aim of the Charité is to provide the children a protected home with basic supplies such as food, clothing and school attendance as well as to reintegrate them back into their family or with relatives. This is done with the help of a non-profit association Œuvre Humanitaire pour la Protection et le Développement de l’Enfant en difficulté (OPDE) (translation: “Humanitarian Work for the Protection and Development of Children in Difficulty”) which provides services to the children such as psycho-social help due to traumatic experiences.