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A Christmas Message

b7096865-b945-453a-a7aa-7bf58aa28e4bWe’ve said it before – we’ll say it again! – it’s been one crazy, challenging year. 

Our Christmas campaign has focussed on things we are thankful for. Here at Empathy Action we wanted to let you know that we are thankful for you. 

 Thank you for reading our words, for staying in touch, for volunteering to help us, for buying our ethical gifts, and for helping us to continue sharing our message of the importance of empathy and taking compassionate action.

We wish you and your loved ones a safe, relaxing, gratitude-filled Christmas. 

 [The final posting date for Christmas orders is Friday. Place your last minute Christmas orders here!]

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #ForYouBecause

Meet the Makers: The Street Children of Harare

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[This post is a difficult one to read. It contains references to violence, drug use and abuse. It is also the harsh reality for the young people living on the streets in Harare.  Annie Makoni, of One Hope Church, whose words form the foundation of this article, did not sugar coat the situation in which these children are living. It is uncomfortable; it is incredibly challenging. After much discussion, we felt it was too important not to tell the full story behind some of the products we sell. Please do read. Thank you so much to Annie for sharing this powerful, difficult narrative. ] 

Today we are taking you to the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, to meet the young people who live there, and who make the beautiful beaded keyrings that we sell.

The story is not an easy one – you will hear of hardship and loss, and vulnerability and loneliness. But throughout it, there is determination and hope, and the children’s sheer will to survive.

Annie Makoni, together with her team from One Hope Church, has worked with the street children for several years. She paints a candid picture of how the kids live, and how hard it is to rescue and rehabilitate them.

There are no quick fixes. It’s loads of fun, hard work, needs heaps of energy and patience. We meet some absolutely unforgettable, brilliant, funny, vibrant characters, who make us laugh and laugh. We also often feel the huge burden of pain and hopelessness of those who feel rejected and beaten down whose stories make you wake up in the night and cry. It’s a long and painful story for anyone to reform. But we keep going as this is not yet the end of the story.”

The story begins with the need to survive. 

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Nine out of ten times [children end up on the streets due to] abuse from a step-parent.”

Annie goes on to explain,

“Shona people traditionally believe that if they take someone into their home who is not of the same ancestors as them, it will cause them bad luck. Many stepmothers refuse to nurture the children of their husband’s former marriage, depriving them, not only of love but of basic necessities such as food, clothing, education, etc.” 

Zimbabwe also has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, and despite ARV treatment being widely available, many people with HIV do not want tests (there is still a stigma attached to the disease). As a consequence, people succumb to common diseases such as TB and malaria because their immune systems are compromised. This results in a large number of orphaned children, who leave home either because they are unwanted or abused by relatives, or they have to find work to support their younger siblings. 

Poverty is another big driving force. Even if young people do have caring parents or other relatives at home, they often lack the opportunities to attend school or find work, and they believe that the city will give them a better life.

Sadly for many, they find, on arriving in the city, that the streets are not paved with gold and that there are thousands of others like themselves, trying to find work.”

On the street, life continues to be a struggle to survive.

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“To survive a child needs to join some kind of gang. The gangs have ‘bases’ where they sleep and hang out, and children base themselves as near as they can to some source of food or money-making opportunity. Many gangs hide out behind supermarkets in the alleyways where the rubbish bins are, and where food is thrown out. They wait for the moment each day when rotten food or food which is no longer sellable, is thrown out and then they pick through it, putting anything edible into dirty cardboard boxes for them to share afterwards.” 

Within their gangs, the children have various ways of making money: begging at traffic lights; forming mini businesses (like washing cars); and committing petty crimes, like stealing handbags and breaking into cars.

Money is likely to be stolen by someone else as soon as it is gained – younger and weaker children are, of course, the most vulnerable.

So it is important to spend it as quickly as possible. 

Food is a priority, but drugs are often even higher up the list. Generally, our street kids are not on hard sophisticated drugs like cocaine, but they can get wasted pretty quickly and effectively just by visiting the shoe man. Almost every shoe mender in downtown Harare has a little queue of kids lining up to buy shoe glue.” 

Once the glue is bought, the children “slump down anywhere”, put their small plastic containers over their mouths and inhale, “breathing in deeply as if it were life-saving oxygen.” The whites of their eyes turn yellow, and they fall unconscious. 

“They are oblivious to the cars narrowly missing their heads as they loll over the pavement onto the road, or to the people stepping over them as if they are no more than an inconvenient piece of rubbish.”

Kids also get high on “broncho” – a cough mixture with high levels of codeine, sold on the street, and “sombodia” – a drink which is a mixture of fertilizers and paint thinners.

Nights are generally not for sleeping, especially during the winter due to the cold. Many kids stay awake so they can escape other gangs who want to beat them up, and to avoid any other trouble. They make small fires from plastic bottles and old tyres and huddle together in the alleyways and back streets. Sometimes the whole night is spent on the move. By day, the children sleep in parks and on pavements.

Soon, caught up in a gang and addicted to harmful substances, [the kids] begin to forget why they originally came to the streets and just focus on getting through the next day.”

Every day is a series of challenges to survive

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Violence, fire and the seasons

“With so many street people “high” on something, fights can erupt at any time. I have seen a young boy almost strangled by a bully in his gang just for a packet of glue, and a few years back we lost a teenager named Innocent. He was stoned to death in a fight, also over the glue. One boy was set on fire by another lad who had a grudge against him. He was in hospital for over two months and will always bear the scars.”  Annie tells us.

Winter is especially tough. Recently, a mentally disturbed boy who was high on drugs rolled into a fire whilst asleep. He woke up almost too late, and suffered terrible burns.

Annie continues, “Amazingly, thanks to the constant care of him by Victor and Tendai, whilst he was in the hospital, he made a good recovery. Again, he will always bear the scars.”

During the hot rainy season (October to March) drains and alleyways become flooded, and raw sewage often runs through where the children sleep, which makes them vulnerable to diseases like cholera and typhoid. Skin complaints are also a problem.

It is also “not uncommon for children to be swept away and drowned in the storm drains where they crawl in to sleep.”

Sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies

“Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant amongst those in the street. Usually, there are a handful of girls in each gang and they are passed around between the boys. Many become pregnant whilst they are still children themselves. There is also a lot of abuse where older boys are forcing younger boys into sex. The shame and embarrassment means that it is often only when diseases are far gone that they have the courage to ask for help.”

For babies born on the street, there is little chance of escape, and they are often seen as assets, and not only by their mothers. Babies are passed around the street kids – they know that if they go begging with a baby on their backs, people will give more generously. Toddlers are similarly used. They are left in the middle of busy roads to beg and money is collected from the child by an older street person, who is watching and waiting nearby.

Helping through trust and friendship – and patience.

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Living on the streets causes complex problems. One Hope is able to offer two kinds of help. 

One is immediate relief: food, clothes, and medical help … which often builds the initial bridge into a child’s life. The other is a much longer route which takes a great deal of tenacity and perseverance, involving getting to the root causes of what has brought a person into the street and trying to help them to find a way off the streets … This might be through reunification with family, education, or through learning income-generating skills. All of this requires the giving of time and patience to really get to know and gain the trust of an individual young person.”

There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done so that an individual’s needs can be met. Members of One Hope visit the kids in their bases, organise regular outings and football matches, and let them know that the church is a safe place for them. The street kids like to hang out there, freshen up with a shower, and they can also have a meal every lunchtime – they are involved in the cooking as much as possible.

The route off the streets. 

Being reunited with family is always first prize and sometimes it just needs one of our team to accompany them back to their rural homes and sit down with the relatives. Sometimes the reason for running away from home is that they have stolen something in their neighborhood. Having an adult to help them approach those they have wronged and ask forgiveness, often opens the way for a new start. However, where there has been abuse at home, reunification can be a lot more complicated and dangerous for the child. Sadly some families are too disintegrated or abusive to be a safe option. Where poverty has been the cause of a child coming to the street, we have to look at how we can support the family so that the same poverty trap doesn’t just repeat itself. Many rural families have a small plot of land and often providing seeds and tools can be a good way of ensuring that they will be able to survive.”

The gift of the beaded keyrings. 

Providing opportunities for learning income-generating skills is a really important part of our work.”

Young boys are invited to “have a go” at bead and wire work, and if they enjoy it and show a flair, they are invited to join the production team.

Annie says that the making of them is extremely therapeutic. The young boys/men “relax and chat and laugh as well as grow in self-esteem as they realise that they can make something beautiful which others appreciate. Once they are able to make something of good enough quality to sell, we are able to pay them for what they have made. This gives them an opportunity, to find a cheap room to rent which is a first step away from the streets.“

8554d41c-7c12-4068-9daa-dcd6370327edOngoing Challenges

Some of the kids have been on the streets for so long, they are adept at surviving on nothing, and they don’t want to leave the familiarity or freedom of ‘home’. Their gangs and bases give them a sense of belonging and identity in the absence of family.

 Plus they are always on the move. Annie explains,

They change bases, even cities, on a regular basis, especially if they have committed a crime in a certain area, they will suddenly move to another area. [They are often arrested and put on trial for crimes, especially theft.] For these reasons, it’s really hard sometimes to maintain continuity when you are trying to help an individual see through a certain course of action. They can come faithfully to a project or course we are running for a few weeks and then vanish in a cloud of smoke, just when you were beginning to feel that they were making progress.”

When COVID-19 hit the streets in March, many of the young were sent to various institutions. They were treated well but had nothing to do. Before long, they were selling their blankets in exchange for drugs, and spent the winter months suffering from the cold. Many escaped back to the streets, and increasing numbers returned to One Hope, where meals were being cooked every day. Since October, work has been resumed on the ground.

We have temporarily lost many of our regular faces as they have been scattered to different places. It is a time of trying to regroup and re-build the bridges of friendship and trust.”

Hope:  Matthew and Time

Annie says, “Both Mathew and Time (of One Hope) used to be full-time street people. I first met Mathew as a teenager. He was climbing out of a drain onto the street and I invited him to a camp we were having. He and his gang were on their way to get wasted in the Park with a bottle of sombodia. He lived by breaking into cars and stealing radios and mugging people on the streets. Fifteen years on, he is one of the gentlest, most compassionate people I have had the chance to work with. He and Time really understand what it is like to have to kick addictions, turn your life over to Jesus and be brave enough to go back and try to restore relationships at home.” 

It is a long journey, and a young person may return to the streets many times before permanently staying away. And the longer a child has been on the streets, the longer it can take to adjust to life off them.

But One Hope remains a constant:

We hope to be a loving presence in [the children’s] lives so that when they are ready to be helped off the street, they know where to return.”

The hope – and belief – is that there will always be new successes, like Mathew. He is now in charge of the recruitment of the kids who make the beaded keyrings, and who take such great pride in their work.

As Annie says:

It’s a long and painful story for anyone to reform. But we keep going as this is not yet the end of the story.”

[Thank you for reading this article. We know it’s a difficult one. But, together, we can help ensure that this is not the end of the story for the street children. 

Click here to send one of the boys’ beautiful hand made products to someone special; someone who has shown you friendship and love this year. In doing so, you will also help to keep the street children and their stories alive.]

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #ForYouBecause

Meet the Makers: Florence, Lorna and Mary

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Meet the women who hand sew the colourful juggling balls we sell. Our friends at Pursue Kenya run a programme that enables them to meet weekly. Based in the village of Shirotso in Western Kenya, they make the balls from scraps of fabric (Kitenge) donated by local tailors and filled with a local lentil called ndengu.

But it’s not just about what they make. 

Each of the women who attends the workshops is a widow. The workshops allow them to discover new skills, forge new friendships, gossip and have fun. Leanne Coggan of Pursue Kenya explains:

Before any of the widows became involved…the majority of them had been ostracised by their communities and were isolated and very low in mood. Many of them had not had someone visit them for years, and felt unloved and worthless, and that their lives lacked purpose or hope.”

Leanne works closely with Florence, Lorna and Mary – she says they are some of her favourite people – and explains that this group of just three craft the juggling balls. The group was originally larger, but health issues have had an impact.

All the widows live below the poverty line and subsistence farming is a way of life for the women.  Each day they work their land, tend to livestock, and fetch water and firewood. In addition, they all care for several grandchildren whose parents have left rural life for cities in search of jobs. These extra responsibilities of feeding, educating and meeting their grandchildren’s medical needs are hard to bear. Especially as – being widows who have not brought sons to their families – they occupy the lowest social status in their communities.

These are some of the things the widows have said since joining the workshops:

I had not been hugged for so long. My first hug from Ceciliah (of Pursue Kenya) woke up something in me and now I get hugs all the time!“

People in the community like me because they see I must matter to be visited by white people! I am not lonely and I am so happy because I know I am loved and have friends.“

My life has a purpose now, everything has changed, yesterday I was nobody, today I am a big someone and everyone knows it!“

Mary is the youngest of the three widows. When her husband died, she was blamed for his death and shunned by family and friends. At her lowest point, she considered suicide. But Leanne says that, since being able to generate an income through the sale of the juggling balls, Mary hasn’t stopped smiling and (up until the pandemic) always had a house full of friends. She has been appointed the role of secretary for the wider Pursue group and when asked recently how she felt about Pursue Kenya, she said:

It has given me back my life but even more than it was!“

The impact of Covid-19

Leanne explains that their struggle for food has been heightened. The local market places – where the women both sell and buy food –  have been closed. In addition, several of them rely on money sent back from a relative working in the city. The loss of jobs has meant that this money is no longer being received. And the women’s grandchildren are currently receiving no education at all as schools are closed until at least January.

Nor are the widows able to meet up as usual or get their hugs – but they know this will not be forever, and that their lives have already changed for the better.

e89d5505-3a33-4312-9754-79ce45ee6f15What better way to start helping others than by learning to juggle this Christmas. Thank you for helping to support these wonderful women, especially in such challenging times. To see the amazing juggling balls, please visit our shop.

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Every one of our ethical gifts is made by people whose lives are improved with the purchases you make: they gain an income and a purpose, and they are given the opportunity to come together with others and contribute to their communities in a meaningful way. 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #ForYouBecause, #meetthemakers, #radicalkindness, #ShareHumanity

Gratitude In Uncertain Times

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This week saw the launch of our Christmas campaign. It also saw England enter into another lockdown. Once again, we collectively face a period of change and uncertainty. Without doubt, these continue to be challenging times.

During the first lockdown, we reflected upon what this time of change was teaching us: we shared stories, baked bread and reached out, via our Rainbow campaign, to those who had touched us with their kindness and resilience. Now, with darker nights and the prospect of a different festive celebration, we remember the flipside of lockdown for many: loneliness, fear and anxiety.

That is why reaching out to each other matters more than ever. In every challenge, there are glimpses of light and hope. This Christmas, our campaign is focussed upon expressing gratitude; telling someone – a friend, carer, key worker, family member – how grateful we are for their presence, for their kindness, and for their help.We know it has taken, and will take, a lot of great people to get us through. We want to help you say a huge ‘thank you’.

It couldn’t be simpler. Choose from our range of ethically made gifts and add a gift message expressing your gratitude.  We will send your gift and message, beautifully handwritten on a postcard, to your chosen recipient. In addition, each purchase of one of our gifts helps their maker raise their community out of poverty.

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We believe that, even in the most trying of times, focussing on gratitude can help lift us all. We’d love your help to share our message of thanks.

#foryoubecause #empathyaction #chooseempathy #empathyactionstories

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #ForYouBecause, #radicalkindness, choose empathy

Christmas With A Difference

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Sandy, our Innovations Manager, knows that this Christmas will be different.

Extended gatherings of family and friends may have to wait until next year, and myriad concerns continue to circulate with the ongoing pandemic.

Yet Christmas is still there on the calendar. Christmas festivities have always been a way to chase away the encroaching darkness and cold. In pared down circumstances, we are all appreciating kindness and celebrating empathy in even greater measure.

This is exactly what has influenced Sandy and her team when thinking about this year’s Empathy Action Christmas Campaign. During a year of social isolation, so many people have found ways to encourage and support friends and family and reached out to help strangers. 

During ‘lockdown’ I met neighbours I’d never met during NHS claps, had friends knock on my door and wave to me from the street to lift my spirits. I played cards with my husband and children every day and laughed a lot while we talked about the foibles of homeschooling. Highlighting and thanking those people who lifted, and continue to lift me, is exactly what I need to keep me going.”

The Christmas Campaign is set to be launched on 2 November. Think about someone you are thankful for and whom you’d like to send one of our ethical gifts. 

Each of our gifts carries its own story. By thanking your special someone, you will also be offering a hand of support to its maker.

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Stay tuned – you can find us on Instagram /Facebook.

#ShopWithEmpathy #GiveWithLove #ForYouBecause

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #ForYouBecause, #GiveWithLove, #radicalkindness, #ShareHumanity, #ShopWithEmpathy

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