THANDI XABA
The Free State Department of Social Development will conduct dialogues with children living and working on the streets in Bloemfontein but also will include children living in shelters and those at the drop-in centers. The department’s Senior Manager for Children Makgotso Mosetlhe says the three-day initiative is in response to the department’s effort to identify why these children are homeless.
"We have gathered about 120 children living and working on the streets, we want to get their input in a discussion and dialogue where they tell us why they are on the streets," she says.
The dialogue includes an inclusive and multi-division intervention for street-children in the province and will be conducted from Bloemfontein, Senekal, Dewetsdorp and Xhariep District. She says the dialogues will also deal with societal and family issues affecting these children, possibly coming up with solutions that will enable the department to reunite them with their families or to place them legally at the Secure Care Centres.
On the first day of the dialogues, children will have the opportunity to voice out their frustrations and give an in-depth explanation of their situations and what prompted them to choose life on the streets. Stakeholders will then come up with corrective measures from the information they gathered from these session.
The second day will be a cultural day whereby children will be treated to a traditional cuisine, cultural dancing and drama then followed by a “success story session”. They will be addressed by someone who used to live on the streets as a child, telling them how he was able to turn his life around.
The three day event will end with a visit to Grootvlei prison where the children will get a feel of what life is like inside prison and to interact with prisoners. The aim of this exercise is to discourage them from taking part in criminal activities which will result in them getting arrested and spending their lives in prison.
