BACKGROUND OF TSWANE HOME OF HOPE where Trail of Hope Foundation is hosting Holiday for Hope event on the 19th of Dec 2009.

BACKGROUND OF TSWANE HOME OF HOPE where Trail of Hope Foundation is hosting Holiday for Hope event on the 19th of Dec 2009.


Living and working on the streets of Sunnyside,Pretoria young girls are at the mercy of pimps and predators out to exploit them. Under cover of darkness, they prostitute themselves, surviving from one pick-up to the next and one substance fix to another. They have no hope of a different future.

Without homes, parents, mentors or education, these damaged lives have experienced only abuse, squalor, depravity and deprivation, hunger and hopelessness. Some of the girls have been abused, others are orphaned, but all deserve a better quality of life.

Tshwane Home of Hope offers a refuge from prostitution, a safe haven of love, care and hope for girls in crisis. Through love and care, we rekindle the spark of hope in their lives. We value them, and teach them the value of belonging. We re-introduce them to the education system, securing places for them at local schools. We mentor and support them, encouraging them to learn successfully. We wean them off the streets and teach them simple skills to earn an income from other methods.

We give these children hope.
We hope you will too!

With your support, we can repair broken lives, offering young girls hope for the future.

We need presents ,we need volunteers.

Get in touch

Tendai Sean Joe
+27 971 5992
tendaijoe@gmail.com

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Abusers don’t discriminate against colour, creed or age. Child Abuse is rife in our country and unfortunately not nearly enough is being done to protect the future of our country, the children. Government is shirking their responsibility when it comes to providing for destitute families therefore making it increasingly difficult for the poorest of the poor to survive. Abuse & Poverty are the main contributing factors to street children and abandoned baby statistics in our country.

One of the resultant problems is Abandoned Babies. They are found in plastic bags, boxes, parks, public toilets, dustbins and sometimes just left on the side of the road. These babies are helpless little victims, innocent bystanders who did not ask to be subjected to the hardships they face, and this is where Tswane Home of Hope ,together with New BeginningZ would like to make a difference. The babies who are found alive are the lucky ones, but what about those babies who have had their lives stolen away from them by being suffocated in a plastic bag or frozen to death in a dustbin. And in our community this is unfortunately the harsh reality we are faced with far too many times as we come across dead babies.

It doesn’t have to end like this for all of them though. What if we could provide some alternative solution for these desperate mothers? A safe place where they can leave their babies safely and anonymously. A place like the “New BeginningZ Baby Door”.

Some might ask: But how can mothers abandon their babies? The answer is not an easy one, but from our previous work experience we have realised that these mothers sometimes feel they have no other options. Sometimes, the girls who are involved in Commercial Sex Exploitation have their newborn babies taken away and dumped by their Pimps in order for the girls to continue work almost immediately. Others are young teenage girls who are fearful of what their families might say and do to them and there are those who have been raped or part of an incestuous relationship and cannot begin to imagine how they are going to cope with a little child conceived in violence.
Tswane Home of Hope shelter in particular was the project where the “The New BeginningZ Baby Door” was installed. What is the “Baby Door” you might ask? Well, basically it is a square gap or hole in a wall with a hatch where desperate mothers can safely leave their unwanted babies. The person would lift the hatch and place the baby in the receiving bassinet which will press down on the hidden silent alarm button located directly beneath it. Although the person dropping the baby will not be able to hear the alarm, it will sound in the housemother’s room to alert her that there is a baby. She will immediately go and fetch the baby from the hatch regardless of time of day or night. We foresee that most will utilize the “Baby Door” at night.


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PS STATISTICS :According to the Network Against Child Labour, more than 40 000 children under the age of 18 in South Africa are involved in child prostitution as a means to survive.
Many children find themselves without homes as a result of poverty, neglect or abuse. Surviving on the streets, they are vulnerable to the booming sex trade and human trafficking.

Trail of Hope Registers as a Section 21 and NPO

As we have been approaching different organisations both civil and corporate we have realized that we need to be properly protected and registered under South African laws.In so doing we will be able to fundraise and even receive international funds for our project.With that we are going to announce the new board of directors as soon as we are finished with registration.


RE: Trail of Hope Project – A Journey of Hope

Trail of Hope Foundation (“T.H.F”) is a non-profit organization based in Pretoria, South Africa that empowers orphaned and vulnerable children to develop critical consciousness within their context of living. It was founded by Tendai Sean Joe, former street child, now an international advocate for disadvantaged children and youths.

The “Trail” is a trail of human inspiration created to bring attention to the struggles of orphaned and vulnerable children in Africa and suggest sustainable solutions to help transform these children into future leaders of tomorrow.

Currently, T.H.F. is embarking on a three month motorbike journey throughout 16 countries in Africa and Europe collectively. The Trail of Hope journey will begin in Cape Town, South Africa and end in London, United Kingdom. The goal is to produce a documentary that highlights the struggles faced by many orphaned children and use this documentary as a tool for creating global awareness.

Our target is to raise ZAR500,000.00 (USD66,000.00). This will include the projected costs of motorbikes, living expenses for riders and cost of ride (excluding filming budget). For further clarification, budget is available upon request.

We invite Potential Sponsor to join us as a sponsor for this documentary. By being a sponsor, you will be creating a branding opportunity for your company/ organization while supporting a great cause.

We are offering various levels of sponsorships. Please see sponsorship form enclosed. Also, enclosed is the Trail of Hope Foundation business plan. For further information, please contact our New York Ambassador, Melissa Tswana-Daniels at (914) 813-1632.

Sincerely,

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Tendai Sean Joe
Founder/ Director – Trail of Hope Foundation

can we proudly hold our heads high as a child rights conscious world?

The reality of an estimated 12 000 Zimbabwe’s children living on the streets came to a head when some of them gang raped a 38 year old woman in February this year. An act that can not be condoned no matter from which angle you look at it. However, looking at this unfortunate incident in isolation will not direct one to the root of the problem nor will it inform on a lasting solution. The gang rape of the woman does stand out in its gruesomeness and its implications of gender based violence. It should be acknowledged, however, that crime by children living on the streets has become an everyday occurrence that is ignored and at times engineered by members of mainstream society. A case in point being the accountant who connived with two children living on the streets to steal $100 million from her employer. Recently five of these children were paraded before a Harare magistrate for stealing 12 cell phones. The above scenario points to the fact that business and indeed the man or woman on the street can at any time be prey to children living on the street. A number of questions however arise. What are our children doing on the streets? Where have we failed them? What informs crime by children living on the streets? How should we respond to the reality of children living on the streets? Unless we can honestly answer these questions the problem of children living on the streets will continue to haunt us unabated.


Why the streets
Children do not belong to the streets. How then have we managed to send 12 000 of our children to live on the streets. Many reasons have been offered by the children themselves chief among which are child rights violations at family level. Granted, the family system has been brought to its knees by HIV and AIDS and economic hardships. Divorce and death has increased the prevalence of step parenting. In dealing with these challenges adults have trodden on children’s rights by failing to fulfil rights to participation, survival and development and non-discrimination. The best interests of the child have not taken centre stage. While government has put in place policies that encourage communities to take care of children in need of care, there has been a huge gap in political will to support community based structures from the fiscas. Children have therefore not been able to access proper health care, food, love and family life, protection, education, clothing, psychosocial support, birth registration and inheritance in the homes and communities that they live in. Child abuse, including sexual abuse by people who are in loco parentis, has become common place in the children’s environment. Trust and faith in mainstream society’s willingness and ability to look after children has been destroyed and children have therefore headed for the streets in their thousands.

Current Responses
That children should not live on the streets is a matter on which everyone is agreed. Responses however have tended to be high handed, authoritarian, piecemeal and not in the best interests of the child. The authorities have responded by rounding them up using sheer force and dumping them in children’s homes and farming areas. In the process 2 year olds ended up in children’s homes while their parents were in farming areas, a clear case of family disintegration. A snap survey in the children’s homes showed that a majority of the children placed in these homes have since run away back to the streets. It is not difficult to understand why children would run away form these institutions. Most of the homes are operating beyond their capacity as most of their children have been placed by the Department of Social Welfare on a place of safety basis, a temporary arrangement that is supposed to last for two weeks while the state is either trying to locate the family or finding a permanent home for the child. As Mrs. Karadzandima, Center Manager of Chinyaradzo Children’s’ Home states “in most cases the home finds itself stuck with children who are supposed to be on transit because the Department of Social Welfare has no manpower to do probation work”. To make matters worse those institutions are barely managing since government only supports them with $3 000.00 per child per month.

Families of these children have responded by pretending they are not missing a family member. Mainstream society at large has responded by being indifferent, exploitative and outright snobbish. The concept of duty towards all children has been lost completely as is illustrated by the report in the press that the magistrate court guests in the public gallery laughed when the arrested children gave their home address, as a street in Harare. If we can laugh at the homelessness of our children, where is our sense of shame? The media has responded by calling them “street kids”, a “menace” that should be “cleaned up”. Often when a supposedly responsible citizen, connives with children living on the streets to engage in crime, the children make the headlines while the real criminal, the citizen is mentioned in passing. There has been refusal to address the question of why these children will run away from children’s homes or from their families. Authorities have been preoccupied with appearing to do “something” about the problem by hiding them from the face of our streets. The action has not been taken with the active participation of the children, they have therefore headed back for the streets. On the streets when they rape and steal from innocent souls, it seems convenient to forget the role everybody has played in informing that kind of behaviour.

The Best Interests of the Child
Zimbabwe not only has a moral obligation to all its children, but a legal one as well. By signing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Zimbabwe government committed itself to ensuring that its citizens uphold child rights. The CRC provides that a child has a right to be cared for by its family and if the family is unable or unwillingly to do so the state has an obligation to care for such a child. It is the same Convention that obligates all duty bearers to act in the best interests of the child. If the best interests of the child are to be the guiding principle in addressing the challenge of children living on the streets, Doreen Mukwena, a child rights practitioner prescribes the following steps:

An intervention oriented towards participatory family and community reintegration for both the child and family living on the streets.
Budgetary allocation for programmes aimed at building life skills for former children living on the streets.
Budgetary allocation for programmes targeting the strengthening of community based child care mechanisms so that children do not envy the streets.
Removal of the children from the streets would aim to assist the child to realise their full potential.
Mainstreaming of child rights in all planning and actions at family, community and national level.

Only when we have removed our children from the streets and assisted them in reorienting their lives towards being responsible citizens and made our homes chid friendly, can we proudly hold our heads high as a child rights conscious nation.

http://www.childprotection.co.zw/

A little Girl Who Has Made Me Cry

Sometimes we tend to overlook issues that need critical attention because we will be so engrossed in our own trouble.We can never save the world but we can make the world a better place.Put yourself in the shoes of the children in this video,how would you survive this ?Are you strong enough to stand up and say no to this?Are you prepared to back us as we prepare an epic trip to tell the world that enough is enough?

Well UNICEF is doing the best it can,but are we standing up and contributing anything?Should these children just perish?



I do not have a loud voice but i will be heard.I do not need to hold a gun in someone's head to make him see whats wrong.We always talk about POVERTY,but we have a tendency to look away when our emotions are overwhelmed.I myself cried after watching this video but were my tears enough?

I WILL RIDE THE BIKE,eat what these children eat,laugh with them,sleep where they sleep and sing with them.I would like the world to see,we have a long way to go and its everyone's duty to be involved.We need to show thse children love,they need us,they love us but do we love them back?