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Why depend on foreign donors to raise orphans
2007-11-09 09:54:30
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
Currently a number of organisations are out to build and run special centres for orphans and street children as a way of keeping the same under their custody.
Most of these centres are built, and operated by individuals, governments, non government organisations, community based organisations and faith based organisations.
The general practice is that these orphanages or special centres, usually collect children from all walks of life, but particular those who have lost parents or those who are socially alienated, to live with them somehow undermining the general traditional practice whereby the same are kept under the custody of the family.
With the advent of the HIV/Aids pandemic, organised social chaos resulting from the current economic transformations and the emerging cultural diversities, children living in vulnerable circumstances are becoming an order of the day-they are created in every part of the world-both urban and rural areas alike.
To say that such vulnerable children should only be taken care of by families instead of the designated homes or special centres is, to say the truth, to create more problems than the former can hold.
This is definitely to put the families under a big pressure, which they may not be able to withstand. But also subjecting to the custody of the children families may, perhaps in the eventual analysis create some form of social disharmony or related conflicts.
Yet family custody for the vulnerable children remains the best way for taking care of the orphans and street children because it renders the same grow naturally and socially than the currently increasing practice where children are subjected to some designated centres.
Religious leaders have always urged families to ensure that they become the custodian of orphans and other vulnerable children instead of confining them to some specially designated centres.
The Muslim Council of Tanzania Chief Sheikh, Issa bin Shaaban bin Simba, for example, has often been quoted urging Tanzanians to ensure that they keep the socially vulnerable children under the custody of the family and not in specially designated centres because they would be rendered excommunicated.
There are many dangers of subjecting the socially vulnerable children to special designed custodies than to family custodians and vice versa.
Besides the excommunication behaviour that many children are likely to be prone to suffer, there is likelihood for them to imitate certain undesirable behaviours, which at times may render them socially decadent than if they would have been under the custody of the family.
Perhaps it is enough to recall the case of an English caretaker, Duncan Grant, who was running homes for vulnerable children in Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo four years ago, but was wanted in India where he had allegedly sodomised orphans who were under his care. Grant is said to be in jail in India after he was convicted of sodomy.
Nevertheless, what is worse is that, some children, nowadays prefer to leave their homes-even if they can easily get every life amenity-to live in designated homes, not only as a matter of fashion, but also because they find it as a better alternative, which they may have learnt about through infatuations by bad friends.
Specially designated homes, in a way are changing to become breeders of children on the loose-children, some of whom are running away from the traditional family homes and the old social order for some other ‘better’ life somewhere where they feel they cannot be touched by the firm rules they face while under family custody.
What has become worst with the specially designed homes at the moment is the ownership of the homes for the socially vulnerable children.
Some individuals and organisations that are operating these institutions nowadays appear to be keenly interested in the money side of it than the social-humanitarian side.
Some of the organisations and individuals ask or get resources in the form of donations-local and foreign, which many a time do not end in providing service to the children, but are diverted to some private businesses.
Some of these individuals and institutions now reportedly own bungalows, mansions, firms and even shangingis, at the expense of the socially vulnerable children.
It is quite true that when children are put under such designated centres, it becomes easy for other institutions to extend a helping hand to them but, the whole idea of having these centres in such dirty hands has of late tended to spoil the very intended meaning of creating good and safe custody for the children.
Perhaps that is why the government of recent insisted on the need by families to take orphans and street children under their custody and provide them with the necessary needs like what they give to their children instead of keeping them in the designated homes.
Talking to journalists from Misa-Tan and Pact-Tanzania in Arusha last week on a research assignment on corruption and good governance, the Social Welfare Officer for Arumeru District, Samwel Kaaya said the government had embarked on efforts to educate families on the need to take orphans and street children and stay with them.
He said that the government recognised the dangers of establishing such centres as the society would be lax and forget its responsibility on taking care of the same, hence leaving the task to donors, adding that it was not supporting the latter idea.
Either, he said people establishing such centres did not abide by the proper regulations needed in providing services to the said children; hence they ended up forwarding false reports to the donors.
“Such a situation leads such centres to use for their own interests funds meant to help the children, while the latter continue to languish in unending problems,” he said, adding that there was a significant need for educating local and national authorities on the ways to solve the children’s problems without necessarily depending on foreign assistance which did not reach the targeted group.
Without mincing words, the message is clear that even the government itself has discovered the trick being employed by the custodians of the socially vulnerable children to deny the same of their right to live.
Perhaps the 64-billion-dollar question is, why should we rely on donors even when it comes to nurturing our children?
Fine they are orphans, and they are our children, but as a nation, why should we rely on other nations to donate so that we can raise our children? If other nations were to depend on others too for the same, what kind of world would we have?
Let us look for the best way to bring up the socially vulnerable children. And in our belief, the best way is to have volunteering families do the nurturing.
But where it become necessary that specially designated homes should be created, then the society should look for non-greedy and bonafide institutions and individuals to undertake the task.
mwonga19@yahoo.co.uk
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