Cambodia
Cambodia is a country still recovering from its violent and traumatic history.
Decades of civil war have left much of the country without an economic and social infrastructure.
During the 1970's around one third of the population died during the infamous 'killing fields' of the Khmer Rouge regime, which has left the next generation struggling to rebuild.
Poverty and lack of education contribute to a large number of social problems in Cambodia.
More recently the number of people infected with AIDS and HIV is increasing at an alarming rate throughout the country. Many children have been abandoned or orphaned by AIDS and are easy prey for the traffickers of drugs, forced labour and prostitution.
Child prostitution is a serious problem in Cambodia. Lured from their homes in the provinces with promises of reputable jobs or sold by unscrupulous relatives, many young children end up working in the brothels of Phnom Penh. UNICEF estimates that 30 to 35% of all sex workers are children between the ages of 12 and 17 years.
Riverview Children's Foundation is partnering with the following projects in Cambodia that address these problems:
- Youth in Prison Project (Prison Fellowship Cambodia)
- Hagar
- The Sunshine Centre for Children
- Transform Cambodia
Thailand
In Thailand the number of people infected with HIV is a serious problem and thousands of children have been, and continue to be sold into the sex industry.
Children from broken homes where the parents are either dead, in prison, or so poor they are literally unable to care for them, are at an increased risk of entering dangerous or illegal fields of work in an endeavour to survive.
Riverview Children's Foundation is partnering with two projects in Thailand to help prevent and alleviate the suffering of children:
Ukraine
The fall of Communism has brought about considerable personal freedom in Ukraine in Eastern Europe, however economically and socially the country is still struggling.
High levels of poverty, unemployment and alcoholism have contributed to many parents being unable to care for their own children, leaving thousands to be abandoned.
According to government statistics, approximately 50,000 street children live in Ukraine. Once on the streets, many become victims of drugs and turn to prostitution as a means of survival.
Ukraine now has one of the fastest growing rates of HIV infection in the world, and is one of the major centres in Eastern Europe involved in trafficking children and young women for prostitution.
Hands of Hope Ukraine was established in 2003 and exists to bring practical love and real life support to the forgotten children of Ukraine.
UNICEF last published statistics in 2005, stated that over 100,000 babies and children were abandoned or orphaned in Ukraine. With these children primarily in government care, Hands of Hope are working towards the establishment of a home specifically for babies abandoned at birth.
By providing a smaller, family style home as an alternative to long term hospital or institutional care, they aim to reduce the devastating impact that physical and emotional developmental delay has on these children and give them a loving place to call home until foster or adoptive parents can be found.
Working with state run children's hospitals, orphanages and social services, Hands of Hope has the opportunity to make a practical difference through the following projects:
Rwanda
Rwanda is a small, land locked and densely populated central African country that has had turbulent politics, which affected social cohesion of the population since 1959. Internal and international conflicts have taken a heavy toll on the children.
Rwandese society has changed because of the genocide, which occurred between April and July 1994, and left over 1 million people massacred. The country was left grief-stricken and devastated.
Research conducted in November 1994 to discover the extent of trauma among the youth of Rwanda holds the details of 3030 children aged 8-19 across 11 districts. The data speaks for itself: 69.8% saw someone being injured or killed, 79.7% heard someone being injured or killed, 87.4% saw dead bodies or parts of dead bodies, and 16% were forced to hide beneath dead bodies to survive, while 78% experienced at least one death in their immediate family.
Children and adolescents who managed to survive the genocide represent the future of Rwanda, and serious attention must be given to those survivors in order to restore a sense of hopefulness about their future.
African Evangelistic Enterprise
Started in South Africa in 1962, African Evangelistic Enterprise (AEE) is a Christian organisation whose work is focussed in Africa, partnering with local churches and organisations. AEE has indigenous workers based in offices in 10 nations across Africa and from these they move into many more countries. The organisation is committed to serving the poorest of the poor.
Riverview Children's Foundation is partnering with African Evangelistic Enterprise (AEE) in Rwanda to help address the needs of these forgotten children through:
Kenya
In the last ten years, the proportion of the population living in poverty in Kenya has risen from 48.8% in 1990 to more than 56% in 2003. That means that an additional 2.7 million people were living below the poverty line in 2001 than in the late 1990s.
The impact of extreme poverty combined with the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has left orphans and vulnerable children in circumstances that force them onto the street in an attempt to fend for themselves. Thus, the problem of street children in Kenya has reached an alarming state, with thousands of children to be found in almost every town and rural village.
Women and girls constitute the majority of the poor in Kenya. Although females form the bulk of the population, they lack in education, vocational skills, credit access, and market share. Traditions and social norms that favour male dominance leave women and children having to depend highly on men for their livelihood.
The majority of young girls are forced to drop out of school at a young age and succumb to early marriages, or turn to the streets for survival. On the streets they resort to stealing, petty trade, drug taking and trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Prostitution absorbs the highest number of girls on the streets.
Girls on the streets live with the constant threat of rape, physical abuse and forced prostitution. They are exposed to all sorts of health problems, such as STD's, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, skin diseases, malnutrition, and even death. They lack life's basic needs such as food, clothing, medical care, shelter and education.
In Kenya we are partnering with Mully Children's Family, a large project caring for over 1000 former street children in four homes outside of Nairobi.
