Yemeni center aims to help children working in the streets

Yemeni children, formerly working on the streets, attend classes at the rehabilitation center

Suliman Sinan al-Da’keri, 11, of Sana’a, was working in the streets selling electrical materials in Shumailah souq. He was working with his four brothers, as his father had remarried and only gives the boys money if they go to work outside in the streets.

Fawaz, his brother, was selling in the al-Sab’een area, when he saw a social worker from the Working Children Rehabilitation Center registering some children with the organization. He registered himself there and went with the worker to the center. “We were afraid because my brother was late and some children said that he had ridden away on a bus,” Suliman said.

Then Fawaz returned to tell the others his entire story and explain what the center does for working children, after which they all decided to register their names there. Their mother accepted the idea but the father said that they must work even a few hours after their studies in the center. 

Suliman is now one of the smartest students in the center and ranks in the first level every year.

“I received an education and benefited a lot from the activities that the center did with us,” he said. “I hope to continue at the center and become a teacher there because I loved it so much.”    

The Working Children Rehabilitation Center is a Yemeni center caring for children working in the streets of the capital, who are earning a living there. The center targets children working in the streets in order to rehabilitate them and warn them of the risks to which they may be exposed in their work.

The Center was established in 2003 under the auspices of the capital secretariat, with the first stage financed by APEC. It stopped work due to financial reasons, but was later re-opened in its second stage with a new partner, the Children’s Protection Initiative (CPI) in the Middle East and South Africa.

“The center stopped working after three years of caring for the working children of Sana’a due to a lack of financial support from donors and the government,” said Sofia Yassin al-Sayedi, the manager of the center.

“The government claimed that the center was not officially recorded in the budget, but now the cabinet is discussing the decision to help establish and support the center,” said al-Sayedi.       

Al-Sayedi stated that the main purpose of the center is to develop the abilities of the children who are working in the streets and to integrate them into the education system through guidance and direction. 

The basic objective of the centre is to eliminate child labor, or at least reduce it by targeting 1200 children in the labor market and placing them in schools, with all necessary requirements and follow-up. It aims to accomplish this through education and appropriate solutions, and offers education, health and rehabilitation services as well as work to provide economic alternatives.

Education is offered in many areas, including music.

One of the objectives of the centre is to increase the capacity of institutions and associations concerned with children through building a knowledge base of the social and economic needs of working children and their families, and raising awareness among the public, the community and the decision makers concerned with the problem of child labor.

The center has social workers who go to the streets seeking the children working there, and complete reports about them, focusing on the children who work constantly. They also record information about the children’s living situations and families. 

“The social specialists also visit the children’s families and raise awareness with them about the risks of children working and inform them about the center and what is done there,” said Mohammed al-Hamami, education supervisor of the center.

“We are studying the living situations, health and economic situation of the target families in order to develop a clear vision for our work,” said al-Sayedi. “The hours of work for most of the children working in the streets decreased when they [became a part of] the center.”   

Al-Hamami stated that the center also works with children who have been working begging in the streets and orphans. “We are training them and returning them to their families or to the care centers that protect children from the streets,” he said.

The center has preventive and treatment programs for child workers such as the targeting program and rehabilitation programs which focus on education and behavior, as many of the children have developed negative and aggressive behaviors from the streets, he said.

“There are also preventive programs in the center dealing with awareness, guidance, enrolling the children in schools and providing them with clothes and a birth certificate,” al-Hamami said.

Al-Sayedi said that there are children over 14 years of age that the center has tried to train in a technical field. “The government did not cooperate with us by training them in their institutions. They claimed that [the children’s] educational qualifications were not high enough to enter these institutions.”

Donor support for the center ceases in March, according to the current contract, and the government should continue this support, al-Sayedi said. “We are afraid of closing the center because the children will feel disappointed and will lose the feeling that they are being saved. They will return to the street. If funding does not appear, the center will close,” she added.

Al-Sayedi hopes that if the center continues its work, they will extend their coverage to more areas in the capital and will focus more on education, reducing illiteracy, technical training, establishing new workshops and a new data base for the center. “We will also focus a lot on girls because they constitute many of the child workers on the streets,” al-Sayedi said. “We will also create a guide for dealing with children who are living on their own, to be published and made available to all care centers.”

The center also has a new curriculum specializing in treating the educational difficulties of working children or any child living on their own.

There are currently 1100 children that the center targets, with 200 of those coming regularly to participate in the center’s programs. Other children only attend sporadically.

Regarding the increase in the number of children begging on the streets these days, al-Sayedi said that it is due to the closing of the center aimed at protecting children from begging in the streets, but adds, “The center had poor administration and it was in a terrible circumstance, it was a good decision to close it.”

“I wish that all Yemeni youth who have had a good experience from either international or local organizations would try to give back to their country and participate in local organizations to share their experience,” she said. It is an invitation to others to volunteer in projects or organizations such as the Working Children Rehabilitation Center and to play a role in the improvement of their country.

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