In our current circumstances, it is the older kids that it is most difficult for us to support properly. Yet in many ways this is the very group that needs the most help. Younger kids need comfort and food, if they get that they are generally happy. These older children, 12 to 16, have more complex needs and are facing far greater challenges.
For many of them, coming to school each day is in itself a major challenge. Their parents might want them to go herding instead, or for the girls to collect firewood or water, or look after younger children at home. They are also old enough to be threatened by gang members that still roam the area.
For these children, right now, just coming to school is a big achievement. It shows how much they need this school in their lives. Even when it is a shadow of it’s former self, the school still offers them something they can’t get anywhere else. Perhaps it is a meal, or people who believe in them, or people who care enough about them to keep turning up for them each day, regardless of the external circumstances. A place they still feel they are safe and that they matter.
It breaks my heart to see the state that most of them have been reduced to. Since violence and insecurity swept the area, levels of poverty have significantly increased. Nobody has enough to eat, nobody feels truly safe. We can’t abandon them. We must rebuild and give them a chance at a better future, for them and for their whole community. One that is not defined, or held back, by cycles of hunger and violence and fear.
