How Catholic NGO Is Embarking On Night Street Work To Change Children’s Lives In Kumasi

Night street work is a one-time approach that Safe-Child Advocacy, a humanitarian organization of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi, formerly known as Street Children Project, adopted to reach out to the “hard to reach” children in street situation.

This approach was implemented long ago but the faith-based organisation had to stop it to give the children needed peace at night while the workers also needed to bond with their families and have space for their private lives to avoid burn out and other unpleasant effects.

However, it was a memorable event on the night of September 18, 2020 when Safe-Child Advocacy initiated a night street work to share relief items to homeless persons who sleep unprotected on the street.

The relief items which were among the items donated by the Roman Pontiff, Pope Francis through the Dicastery for Integral Human Development/ Caritas Internationalis to Caritas Ghana, was to aid vulnerable persons who were badly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana.

Among the items donated were foodstuff and sleeping materials. The distribution of the food items was earlier carried out over a period of one week by Safe-Child Advocacy and Caritas Kumasi and reached out to over 400 street-connected young women, 80 persons with disability, and 20 other persons in vulnerable conditions. In all, a total of 500 beneficiaries were reached with this donation.

The donated blankets and mats entrusted to Safe-Child Advocacy to share to the targeted population indeed yielded good results, according to Sr. Olivia Umoh, the Director of the organisation.

“We were passionate to reach out to those who were most deserving, thus, we thought meeting them at the point of their need was the most suitable approach, she said, adding that “To achieve this, we needed to go out in the night in search of the homeless who sleep on the street with very little or nothing to cover themselves.”

The Catholic Nun belonging to the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul Congregation shared her experience with the children on the street at night, saying the distribution started with a briefing session by the team during which the team mapped out the plans for the distribution such as the route, number to give at each point of distribution and identifying the priority target group.

She noted that “The briefing session also devoted credible attention to reminding team members to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 precautionary measures while security measures were not taken for granted during the briefing.”

According to the Director, the team knew that night street work had some risks to be mindful of and the briefing session equally served as a mechanism for team bonding, stating that “After a quality briefing session, at exactly 8:00pm, the team embarked on its mission to provide warmth, support and comfort to homeless persons who sleep on the street. Priority was to be given to children and women.”

“It was quite an experience. We met a good number of women with children, young girls, men sleeping in front of locked shops on dirty torn nylons and some on dirty torn mosquito nets,” she said.

“I am not speaking here about mentally ill persons who are generally known to sleep anywhere. I mean mentally sound persons in distressing suffering situations beyond their control. Some of them received our mats and blankets in tears in attempts to narrate to us the conditions that forced them to sleep on the street,” she noted.

“It was a very moving moment for all of us in the team and that night, we reached out to 85 beneficiaries with our mats and blankets. The exercise lasted from 8pm to 11:00pm,” she added.

According to her, what was most spectacular was that the night street work was carried out in collaboration with three other sister organizations, namely, the Muslim Family Counselling Service (MFCS), Chance for Children and Youth Literacy and Development Organization.