Projects: Blantyre Children's Project - "Street Kids"
Multiple, on-going programs in support of our primary objectives
The city of Blantyre, located in the Southern District of Malawi, is the the second largest city in the country. While it is the country's seat of commerce and industry, the home of the Malawi Stock Exchange, and the major employment generator in the country, there are sadly over 2,000 children "on the streets."
The objectives of Butterfly Foundation for Peace (BFFP) center around improving the educational, health, and social and mental well-being of all children, especially those "street kids."
To begin, BFFP Director Andrew Raphael interviewed the Malawi Social Welfare agency and, most important, continues to tour the streets of Blantyre to personally speak with street kids. We provide lunch while encouraging the kids to share their thoughts about their education and health.
During one of our initial interview parties, two children spoke passionately about their desire to return to school. We hadn't planned on it just then, but BFFP happily supplied textbooks and new shoes to get them started.
We started with two children. Just a tiny slice of the felt needs to be addressed. But it was a start!
With key demographic information obtained, and the short- and long-term essential needs determined, BFFP has been developing and implementing complete action plans to address those needs.
This work is sorely needed. The vision is achievable! Butterfly Foundation for Peace looks forward to the time when these children, rather than being deficits to the country or even criminal elements, will instead thrive as productive members of Malawian society.
Street kids with new shoes and textbooks gifted by Butterfly Foundation for Peace.
Director Andrew Raphael in rear.
Education
In this project, we are dealing with street children between the ages of 6 years old to 16 years old. These ages are very relevant in the sense that it is the age at which a child in Malawi is allowed to start school at the primary level. We enrolled the children in different primary schools mostly around Blantyre. So far Butterfly Foundation for Peace has been able to enroll a total of 47 street-connected children in these primary schools.
Apart from enrolling the kids in school, Butterfly Foundation for Peace supports the kids with all their educational needs and necessities. Butterfly Foundation for Peace provides the kids with school shoes, exercise books, school uniforms, pencils, school bags, and pens. Butterfly Foundation for Peace also takes the initiative to pay for the kid’s school primary government fees.
Volunteer teachers and assistants teach classes to street kids at the Butterfly Foundation for Peace facility in Blantyre.
Contributors from across the globe have donated their time and funds.
Can you volunteer your skills or make a donation to support our work in Education? Click here!
After School Program:
Guiding Principles
Butterfly Foundation for Peace engages the children in counseling, after which they are enrolled back into school.
Malawian schools meet only half-day. After school, the children then come to our mandatory, free program: the Butterfly Foundation for Peace Comprehensive Mindfulness Program. This program has four guiding principles and goals through which we seek to inspire children:
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Creativity
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Responsibility
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Critical Thinking
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Social Relationship
The program plans to address these goals specifically through teaching Music, Art, Drumming (local arts), Yoga, Meditation, Critical Thinking Exercises, and Social or Community Responsibility.
The overall strategy and atmosphere are based on a positive, mindfulness environment to support, foster, and strengthen the youth’s self-esteem.
Our program is structured and tailor-made to ensure that there is transformation and evolution in the lives of the children we are supporting. The Butterfly Foundation for Peace strives to steer children towards being loving, generous, and full of kindness/compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude.
Family & Community Reintegration
Not every street child has no home at all. Several of our Butterfly children have parents and homes but for some reason have abandoned their homes and end up on the streets.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace helped to facilitate the reintegration of the children back into their homes by bridging the gap between the children and their families.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace took a role in negotiating with parents on the staying arrangements of the children. We also have meetings with parents where we discuss burning issues surrounding their children and how best things can be resolved.
In addition, in order to effect lasting change in the children's environment, we have developed parenting instruction that will help parents understand and raise their children in a more directly caring and positive way.
These reintegrating initiatives are very relevant and complementary to the education push of this project because educating the child while they do not have a home to go to cannot be effective and efficient. In some cases, Butterfly Foundation for Peace had to relocate some kids to districts other than where the families of those kids stay.
Reintegration is one of the major tools for reducing the number of children on the streets of Blantyre.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace staff and volunteers with families of the Butterfly kids.
Health
Butterfly Foundation for Peace goes to the Gateway Health Center in Blantyre to get cholera vaccine
Foundation Director, Andrew Raphael, sets the example by taking his cholera vaccine
Anti-Cholera Program
"I don't want to get sick and I don't want any of you to get sick."
When our Director, Andrew, heard on television news that cases of cholera were increasing in Malawi, he knew he would have to lead by example. The Butterfly street kids knew nothing about the disease, its effects, or how to prevent it. Andrew understood that these children were particularly at risk for contracting the deadly disease; many of them sometimes scrounged their meals from garbage bins.
"I am going to get my cholera vaccine. And if anyone would go with me, I would be so grateful," he told the kids.
Here's Andrew's report: "To my surprise, the kids agreed! I hired a mini bus to take 26 children to the Gateway Health Center in Blantyre for their first dose of cholera vaccine. A week later, the center sent healthcare providers to the Butterfly facility--at the hospital's own expense--to administer the second doses of vaccine."
Sexual Health Services
& Counseling
Among the most serious threats to the health of street children is the high degree of exposure to sexual abuse, rape, prostitution, and sexual bartering and exchange. Casual sex and romantic sexual relationships as well are among the factors that increase their risk of acquiring sexually transmitted infections.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace has intervened by helping the children to get relevant health care and education about sexual and reproductive health.
Due to the shameful perception of sexually transmitted diseases, most children suffer in silence. Butterfly Foundation for Peace has been able to develop good relationships with the children and the children eventually opened up and were assisted.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace also facilitated counseling sessions with health workers on issues related to their sexual health.
Nutrition
Butterfly Foundation for Peace provides meals with substantial nutritional value. Living on the streets, the food these children eat is usually insufficient to meet their daily energy and nutrient needs. This is particularly true considering that street children are highly mobile, and are likely to engage in high energy-demanding activities to earn money.
Butterfly Foundation for Peace aims to replace inadequate and unbalanced meals with nutritional support in the lives of street children because, in the long term, inadequate and unbalanced meals may weaken the immune systems of these children
We recently moved to a new location in Sunnyside which is also allowing us to do some farming!
We have grown maize, beans, and some vegetables. At this new location, there is a potential for us to do some poultry farming in the future.
Social and Mental Well-being
