Street Children in Durban - A view from a 10 year old.

I am proud to introduce my lovely daughter Jess, dance student, and actress, who visited Durban and their street children with our family in 2009.  Being only a child at the time she has a unique set of memories of being a child observing the suffering of other children.

Jess tells us more in her guest post below....

Jess aged 10 playing on Durban Beach (one of her favourite places in the world!)

Age 10, I didn't think anything could be so bad that it could cause pain to children's lives. I had a house, a lovely family and could chase my dreams, knowing there would always be someone to support me. It was how I'd grown up, and how I thought every other child grew up as well, but I was wrong, very wrong.

During my visit to Durban, South Africa, the street kids of Umthombo  were the friendliest children you could wish to meet and you'd never have known some of their backgrounds from seeing them. 

They welcomed us and appreciated us coming and I just wanted to play with them and have some fun, as after all they were kids like me, weren't they?

During the week that we were with Umthombo, we were not only there to learn but also to play with the street kids and be their friends, which is not what I can say about a lot of the community around them who didn't understand them or their lives.

DAY ONE- me and my mum with some of the Umthombo team, went round Durban to learn about the city, the kids and the situation at the time. It was a year before the major international Football World Cup which was being hosted in Durban, the city were told to 'clean up the streets and the city' to make a good impression on the incoming tourists and professionals who were due to come. The authorities and council did this but they took it a little too far. 

In South Africa, there are two types of police, the police department for the country and then the Metropolitan, the city police. The metro police decided that as the street children caused social problems on the streets, they were a problem which they had to clear up. 

The Umthombo team spoke of round ups and how they couldn't do anything for the kids when the metro police were involved, they could only help if the kids were in 'safe space' the Umthombo building itself. However, this would seem a perfect solution because you could just get all the kids in one safe spot. However, at this time Umthombo didn't have the facilities to keep children in over night so every day they had to force the children onto the streets for the night until 6am as Umthombo was only open between 6am and 11pm. So the team could not help regardless of if they wanted to after a certain time.

As we were walking around Durban we were told about this and on the way we met some kids that the leaders knew and had worked with, we even saw some of their artwork that they had tried to make a point with.

An example of street children art in one of Umthombo's art programs.

The street children were just like some of the teens from home, skating along grafitti on the skate park walls.

However one question that always crossed my mind was why are there no girls?

Towards the end of our journey round Durban suddenly out of nowhere we heard shouting and screaming. Me and everyone around me began to run as I felt mum grab my hand tightly and run with the group. Finally we reached the spot of the violence and shouting.

There we found a metropolitan police van with a large number of  street kids in the back, caged and screaming 'help!' , 'Get off me!', 'Let me out' and 'why are you letting them do this to me?!' A small child was reaching out to the Umthombo team and screaming 'please help me, please!'. We all stood there feeling hopeless as we saw the van of children being driven away. I asked where they were going and I was told, 'miles from here to the countryside where they have to make their own way back'.

After we saw, this mum made sure I was by her side the whole way back to 'safe space'. We almost reached Safe Space when my arm was grabbed by a man a lot older than me trying to pull me down an alley and luckily the Umthombo team knew him and took me away from him immediately. Within one day the true dangers for the street kids were revealed to me! The metro police and the streets itself.

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Slowly after this it was revealed to me why we hardly saw any girls. Girls were more likely to get into groups of men because they felt safer there even if they were being abused by them in another way. Boys in the streets had to be careful just as much as girls but many girls became pregnant or severely poorly from sexually transmitted diseases and with the lack of healthcare they got, not many would get better quickly, if at all.
To make it worse they couldn't escape from this place of harm, the streets was their home now and they couldn't go back to what they were used to.

Looking back on it now, it is horrific how young children, 'free' people were treated. And seeing it from such a young age really opened my eyes to how imperfect the world is when there is poverty like this on the streets around us. Why should any person feel forced to leave their home and fight for themselves, especially from the age of a teen maybe even younger. Why should any policeman have the right to round up kids and dump them miles from what they know?! It's just wrong and not fair. Whilst I was in South Africa I developed a strong hatred for the metro police and I began to refer to them as the metro bullies. I didn't understand why someone could be so horrible! I didn't even think that this kind of thing was legal never mind being caused by the law itself!!

Umthombo provide a Safe Space for street children in Durban to feel valued and develop.

Leaving South Africa, I remember vividly me and my mum sitting together on the plane, knowing we were going home to somewhere safe, and crying...because we knew those kids and young adults that we met, they wouldn't be going home, they wouldn't know where their next meal would be, and worst of all they wouldn't even know if they'd wake up in the same place tomorrow. I felt guilty for leaving and all I wanted to do was bring them home with me and make them feel wanted.

Jess is performing in the upcoming musical, Singing In The Rain at the Cambridge ADC Theatre with The Pied Pipers Musical Theatre Club.  Click here for more information and to book tickets.

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