Street children reformed through programming

Zachariah, now age 15, lived a life of poverty, drug abuse, crime and shrinking horizons, eventually driving him into the streets of Nairobi. 

The teenager from Embakasi West says the environment he was brought up in forced him into the life he was leading until four years ago.

After dropping out of school in Standard 3, Zachariah was already smoking cigarettes, marijuana and engaging in petty theft by the time he was celebrating his 11th birthday.

"When you grow up where I did, you eventually just find yourself engaging in the things I was doing," he told the Star in an interview.

Currently, Zachariah is a rehabilitated Standard 5 student at the Don Bosco Boys' School at Kuwinda, Lang'ata. The school also accommodates girls. 

Zachariah was rescued from the streets in 2015 by a social worker and enrolled at the Don Bosco Rehabilitation Centre. 

"I stayed at the rehabilitation centre for three years, which is the maximum time. It was tough to change because that was the life I was used to," he said. 

Zachariah said he still gets into a little trouble at school. He says he is doing his best to change completely.

"I want to become an aeroplane engineer when I grow up so I will stay in school even though sometimes it's hard."

Programming lessons

The school, which mainly accommodates street children and those from surrounding slum areas, introduced a one-year programme of simple coding and programming to give students more life skills and opportunities. 

It also has a workshop that teachers others skills and helps the school to be self-supporting by selling products.

The programme called TotoSci is facilitated by Huawei technologies and will run at the school for a year. It already has 12 graduates. 

"We train the students each Saturday with the hope that what they learn will help them acquire more life skills," Huawei media relations director Dalmar Abdi told the Star on the phone. 

Zachariah, who is part of the programme, says he has learnt a lot and is excited to learn even more when school resumes next term. 

"The program is good because it allows us to learn new things such as programming and wire connectivity. Then we can do simple actions such as switch the lights on and off," an ecstatic Zachariah says.

Headteacher Lawrence Maingi said the programme conforms to the objectives of the school. 

"Our objective is to assist former street children and children from poor backgrounds by enrolling them into rehab and admitting them into our school," he said. 

Maingi said some children are admitted to the school as a show of goodwill to the surrounding communities, mainly slum families. 

Such is the story of 12-year-old Beatrice, who hails from Kuwinda slum and is part of the Totosci programme. 

Beatrice, who is one of the day scholars, lives at home with her parents and aspires to become being a singer.

'The programme is very helpful and we get to learn fun and interesting things to do with electronics," she said. 

Condition of rehab

Headteacher Mwangi explained that they send out social workers every year to rescue children from the streets. Depending on their situation, they are enrolled in a rehabilitation programme for a maximum of three years. 

"If after the period of rehabilitation the child is still not recovered, we reapply in court because the court has to approve it and then we extend their stay until they are ready," he said. 

"After rehabilitation, there are two things that we do. We either reintegrate them back to their families or admit them into the school," Maingi said.  

The school engages the students in activities such as sports, clubs, foreign languages (French), farming and a workshop where they do wood and metalwork. 

"The workshop is a high-level production unit where we produce items for sale as a means of supporting ourselves," Maingi said. 

"The children do not pay school fees, they pay a commitment fee of Sh800 per term to cater for lunch, breakfast and supper and the rest is taken care of by donors and well-wishers."

(Edited by R.Wamochie)