Effectiveness of Non governmental Organizations in the Rehabilitation of Street Children – Experiences from Selected NGOs in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This paper is based on a study that sought to establish the effectiveness of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in rehabilitating street children in Dar es Salaam City. A number of strategies are deployed by the NGOs to identify and pick the children from the streets for rehabilitation. These includes; conducting interviews in order to know the child better, picking the children from the streets to drop-in centres, conducting medical check up and screening to establish the health status of the children, and eventually conducting counselling so as to change their street wise behaviour. Furthermore, family tracing and reunification, reach out programmes, welfare meetings and reintegration as well as day out programs are conducted by the NGOs as ways of rehabilitating the picked up street children. Beside the normal social services such as shelter, food and medical care, the rehabilitee children are exposed to both formal and informal education through vocational training and talents development programmes. All of these services are made possible by the respective NGOs who receive generous support from donor agencies, private companies, individuals and to a little extent, the Government. A number of problems have been found to limit the NGO’s efforts to accomplish their mission. Some of the problems are; lack of enough funds. lack of community support, inadequate Government support, poor working environment, poor educational background of the rehabilitees and lack of immediate trust of the children to their minders. This paper proposes that street children, just like other children, are potentially principal agents for social change though at the same time they are vulnerable to the problems that accompany the social changes. It is essential therefore to examine what can be done to protect children from those social ills, and to harness their abundant energies for constructive work in their communities. Keywords: Street Children, Non Governmental Organisations, Life Skill