The Boys

Over the years the work with ex-street kids and other vulnerable children has developed and changed. At the moment we have 15 boys staying with us, aged 12-24. Some have been with us for over six years while our most recent additions arrived a few months ago. Some have families in Lusaka who were unable to care for them and they are encouraged to stay in touch. Others have no family at all or do not know where they are. Throughout the years, the boys have come to us through different means and have different stories and our project has changed and developed to meet the changing needs in the community.

Originally we had a group of 18 boys, aged 16-22, who stayed with us in our town house before moving to the farm. These were generally kids who had been thrown out of existing centres for street kids for being too old or who had never left the streets. Street kids in Zambia are the result of several problems including HIV/AIDS related deaths, abusive parents/step-parents, over burdened families and general poverty. The majority of street kids are boys, this is because girls can be used for domestic work, as sex workers and bring in a dowry when they are married. This means girls are worth keeping while boys are the first to be abandoned or told to fend for themselves when a family begins to break down. There has also been a surge in raising awareness and funding for pro-girl projects in recent years which means there are more resources available for girls who do end up on the street. When we first started working with street kids, we were taking in the ones who had fallen through the cracks, who didn't fit the requirements of the pre-existing centres.

When we moved to the farm our numbers grew rapidly as we now had more space to house kids who had previously only been coming on Sundays for feeding. We were also able to house several kids who had been living with their families but we were sponsoring in school and supplementing the family income in order to keep them together. In this way we were often able to help the boys' sisters who had not ended up on the street but were still in need of support and the chance of an education. At our busiest we had forty boys on the farm and about thirty other children in the community who we were supporting. As our first boys grew older and began to leave home to begin life on their own, our numbers slowly decreased. We began to get referrals from Social Welfare which were often complex cases involving boys with HIV/AIDS, TB and other medical problems but who hadn't necessarily lived on the street. These boys needed constant monitoring and a strict routine to make sure they took their meds. This shift from caring for large numbers to fewer but more complicated cases marked a transition to our work as it stands at the moment.

 The boys who stay with us at the moment are all in school and are like any teenage boys really. They love football and play whenever they can. On Friday and Saturday nights they usually watch a movie in the big house. They do chores around the dormitory and hang out in the nsaka (thatched area) where they have a library, a pool table and darts board. They enjoy singing and have a semi-formal choir which rehearses in the early evenings some days and can be heard round the farm. OMF has a reputation as a way to escape the street and our philosophy of treating the project as a large family means anyone can find a home here. While it is not all success stories, the majority of the boys who have been through OMF have turned out better for it. Some of our first boys are now working and have families of their own when the would, statistically, be dead by now had they stayed on the street. We have several in college studying accountancy, insurance, law, medicine, IT and engineering. Others have careers as mechanics, tradesmen, barbers, drivers, bakers, carpenters and game rangers. While the project will continue to develop and change its core goal has been and will always be to give young people a family environment and the chance to make something of life.