Over 5,000 street children contacted and rescued, over 1,000 involved in educational projects and 600 attending professional training courses. These are the figures achieved by the “Dagoretti Child in Need Project” – run by Amref (African Medical and Research Foundation) and launched in 2000 thanks to support from Fondazione Zegna – in the Dagoretti quarter of Nairobi, in Kenya. The poverty rate in Dagoretti is 46% and nearly all small children and adolescents in disadvantaged families live on the street.
Based on the principle of the “4 Rs” (Rescue, Rehabilitation, Re-socialization and Reintegration), the project is also a model for the assistance and support of disadvantaged children, who everyday receive education, medical care and food, and are given help to return to their families.
The project’s other objectives are to:
– raise the community’s awareness of children’s rights
– build a sustainable model for street children assistance to use in other communities.
This is why the project has already been chosen by the Kenyan government and UNICEF as a format for four pilot projects to develop Infancy Protection Centers in the country.