The Day A Street Child Taught Me To Surf.

When I visited the Umthombo Street Child project in Durban South Africa, I never expected that a street child would give me a gift.

One of the common causes of being a street child is experiencing abuse at home and believing in the perception that it would be safer to live on the streets of Durban or any other city in the world.

So when they get to the city they often experience hardship, further abuse and live in very dangerous circumstances.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received a special gift from a street child on the beaches of Durban.

One of the projects that Umthombo have truly made a difference with, in Durban, is the Umthombo surfing project.  The video below gives a good overview of the benefit of that program to children living on the streets of Durban.

Street children being taught to surf, and having the daily discipline of surfing and training.  This work builds up confidence, stamina and a sense of meaning that has often been battered out of those kids living on the streets. It also shows them a different alternative to crime and drug abuse. They stop being just a street child and become someone fulfilling their potential.  Some of those street children have gone on to be international surfers competing in competitions around the world.

I was fortunate to be able to join those children in 2009 and one of them taught me how to surf.  He spent two hours showing me how to do it and you know what?  It was hard!  It was skilful and it showed me how much hard work would need to be put in to be good at surfing.

That day, I actually managed to stand on my surf board and surf for a couple of seconds.  In that time I felt such a rush of excitement and adrenalin and strangely freedom.

If I felt like that being a British tourist who has infinitely more than most of those street children, then I wonder how a street child must feel when they surf and people look at them as people of value again?

I was grateful for that gift that the street child gave me.

It is projects like these that Amos Trust supports in countries all over the world, this is why I am jumping out of a plane in July.  Please support me. Thanks.

A positive story about street children in Durban

Street Art in Durban 2009

When my family and I visited Durban and the Umthombo project for Street Children, Durban was very much at crisis point.  

In 2009, the city was getting ready for the Football World Cup and for the local metropolitan council, street children were getting in the way.  Crime was rife, tourists would get robbed and the council was  extremely worried about how this would put off would be visitors in 2010.  Street children were very much in the spotlight of blame for the crime.  So much so that there were numerous blue metropolitan police vans driving around the city , picking up street children and driving them out of town to be told not to come back, often with a beating.

The mobile health clinic that supported street children during the day from Umthombo.

The then director of Umthombo, would regularly meet with the council to express his concerns as to how street children were being treated and often there would be a stand off between the two parties.

Ironically the turning point for the city and street children, in particular, was the World Cup 2010.

Amos Trust founded an initiative called the Street Child World Cup.  To be held in the March of 2010, the event invited teams of street children from all over the world to come to Durban and represent their country at the first Street Child World Cup.

This was an opportunity to raise the profile of the plight of the children living on the streets and with the motto "I am somebody', the street children had an opportunity to move from being a despised problem on the streets to being representatives for their country.

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This competition forced politicians in different countries to really consider what was happening to these children and for organisations to work together to help them.

In more recent years I was pleased to find out that the numbers of children sleeping on the streets of Durban had been reduced massively, through Umthombo, the metropolitan council and Amos Trust working together.  Kids were reunited with their families and those that weren't had more resources available to help them turn their lives around.  

One exciting project is 'Surfers Not Street Children' set up by Tom Hewitt, former director of Umthombo where street children get taught to surf on the beautiful beaches of Durban and even compete, sometimes at international level.  This initiative has lead to the older street children to getting sponsorship deals, jobs and a great deal of respect.

By working together to support street children in Durban, great things have happened and this has been an inspiration to other projects all over the world, even changing policy in some countries such as in Pakistan.

This is why I am jumping out of a plane in July, because Amos Trust is making a real difference to the lives of street children through supporting local projects such as Burundi's New Generation or India's Karunalaya.

By supporting me in my jump you will play a part in making a real difference to a child who is often ignored on the streets, often blamed for crime, beaten and abused.  These kids have potential and the deserve to realise that potential.  

You can help me by following and sharing my blog or simply clicking the icon below to sponsor my jump.  Your support means a lot to me.  Thanks.

Durban - The Washing Boy

The Washing Boy by John Hicks January 2015.

In 2009, my family and I had the opportunity to travel to South Africa for two and a half weeks.
We had planned to visit a street child project called Umthombo for the first week in Durban and then drive down to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth for the rest of our time there.

A map of our journey from in South Africa, from Durban to 'PE' to Cape Town.

I will be honest, I went with the attitude that I just needed to get through the first week in order to enjoy the following week and a half.
The first week was arranged by Amos Trust and Chris Rose was leading the tour.  Amos Trust raises awareness in the UK about many issues of injustice around the world and we were here to find out about the abuse of children who lived on the streets of Durban.

In the build up to going, I understood that Durban was a very dangerous place.  You wouldn't go out at night on your own walking around Durban as you were likely to get mugged (and that would be if you were lucky).  I had already heard about how Durban was the car jacking capital of the world especially as I was going to be hiring a car at the end of that week!

So I was fearful of being in Durban and had low expectations.  Actually that week turned out to be the best week of my life and in many ways changed my life in the years afterwards.

I will expand on my experiences in Durban in later blogs (as I will about my experiences in the West Bank) but for the purposes of this blog I want to write about the very first time I ever saw a street child in Durban.

On our first day in Durban, we all met in the hotel reception area and then walked over to Durban's beautiful beach.  It was a peaceful time of day with the sweetness of the warm sea breeze sweeping across us.  The temperature was lovely and cool and we all walked along the promenade with views of the sea and distant ships travelling to Durban's port..
We were all following Chris, I was walking around with 'tourist eyes' but also vigilant of any danger.  I had heard about gangs of street children running around stealing and mugging.  So I was nervous.

We all stopped at an agreed meeting point and about ten feet ahead of us was a dripping tap and there was a little boy probably no older than 10 years of age washing his clothes.  He wasn't bothering anyone, just having a wash.  At that point, my fear of dangerous gangs of street kids went out of my head and I saw the child that was standing there, alone in a dangerous city, just cleaning his clothes.

I was struck by how easy it is to be fearful of the gangs of Durban and see them as dangerous groups of kids , causing havoc, stealing, mugging etc.  In fact , at the time, the city was getting ready for the Football World Cup that was happening the following year.  The city council new that their city was famous for crime and these gangs of street kids and very much saw them as a deterrent for tourists.  The council regularly drove around in vans picking up the street kids and driving them 50 miles from Durban, giving them a kicking when they stopped whilst telling them not to come back.

But in that moment, I saw that child and yes the street kids did do all the things that they were accused of, but they were living on the streets of a dangerous city trying to survive.

That 'Washing Boy' changed my view there and then and left me wanting to know more about the life of a child living on the streets of Durban.

Why I am jumping for justice.

Hi I am John Hicks.

I am nearly 44 and I live with my wife Diane and my two daughters Beth and Jess in Cambridgeshire, UK.  On July 10th,  I am going to take part in a tandem skydive raising awareness about human rights and raising money for the London based human rights charity, Amos Trust.  Today I received the all clear from my doctor and I have a certificate to say that I am medically ready to jump out of that plane!

Ooh er!  It looks like I am committed now!

One of the things that we love to do as a family is to travel and we have been to many different countries and explored different cultures.
In 2009, we visited Durban in South Africa, almost at the tip of Africa.




We decided to go there because we had heard a lot about a project that sought to help children and young people that lived on the streets of a city famous for violent crimes and abuse.
The project, Umthombo Street Child, gave street children a place to go for support and hope to one day be reunited with family or develop a better life for themselves.
Umthombo used sport (surfing and football), art and dedicated workers to reach out to those children, some of whom could be as young as four.
On one occasion, the then director of the project, Tom Hewitt MBE, said to me that every street child that I would have met will have had experienced some form of sexual abuse in order to be accepted into the numerous gangs in the city.  For many of those kids, being in a gang meant being 'safe' on the streets.
Considering what these kids had to deal with, they were always friendly to us and Umthombo gave them hope for the future, and opportunities to set away from life on the streets.

In June 2014, I was fortunate to visit another project based in Bethlehem in the West Bank, Middle East.



I was playing in a band for an arts festival and so by night I did the rock n roll thing and by day I visited places where Palestinians lived.
On one occasion I visited a family just outside Bethlehem and they gave me a seat under an olive tree and served me tea.  I played with their kids for a while too, I tried to teach them to juggle.  They thought it was funny.

The only problem with this scene, was that in the background lay the demolished house of that family.  The Israeli Defence Force, gave them an hour to abandon the house before a bulldozer smashed it down.  This was the start of Israel taking their land, which the family had owned for generations, and trying to force the family out.
Despite this, they welcomed us and gave us what little they had and told us their story.  Their water supply which was a borehole was even demolished by the bulldozer so as to make life really hard.

You can read about my visit there by visiting my blog which includes photos, stories and some poetry that I wrote about my experience.  Click here

In both South Africa and in The West Bank, despite what is happening at a political level, children's lives are being negatively affected by the selfish actions of adults.  These actions take away justice and hope for these children.

I am committed to doing what I can to change situations like those described and I am doing this by raising money for The Amos Trust, a UK organisation that supports grass roots organisations in countries that rebuild hope and restore justice.

This is why I am going to jump out of a plane at 15000 ft in a tandem skydive. As I do this I will think of those kids that I have met, some of whom have died at the hands of people that do not champion hope and justice choosing to oppress, damage and belittle the lives of children and adults that have such potential.

I will write more blogs about my upcoming experience and about the experiences that have led me to do the skydive. I hope that I can help you to understand some of what I have seen and maybe even get involved yourself.

For now, if you would like to very practically get involved, I would be delighted if you could sponsor my jump by clicking the banner below or at the very least simply share my story to your Twitter, Facebook or Google accounts.

Thanks for listening.

John