While families were out on Easter Monday having a family fun time and celebrating the resurrection of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, there were also the not-so-lucky children for whom the street, more than home, has become their real home.
Strolling through the almost empty streets of Accra on Easter Monday, pockets of these street children were seen trying so hard to hang on to the little that had earlier been donated to them to sustain their life in them till the return of vehicular traffic on Tuesday, April 19.
The story was however different at the forecourt of the Oak Plaza Hotel, East Legon where a party dubbed “A Day with the Prospective Dreamers’,” was organized for people living on the streets.
Organizers of the Party, Jenx Youth Hub International brought together most of these people, fed them, donated clothes to them, gave them education on sexual reproductive health and registered them in their database so as to have a continuous engagement with them.
Streetism has become both a global and a national canker that demands urgent and rigorous attention.
A recent study conducted by UNICEF indicated that streetism has taken a turn for the worse as numbers increase and living conditions of street children deteriorate amidst rising economic hardship and social insecurity and that Covid-19 has defeated more than 20% of progress made at curbing the canker.
Pouring out his emotions while calling for the public’s intervention, the supposed head of the street youth at Shiashie, Charles Amankwah said, “We have known the streets all our lives and we will plead with the public and the government to also think about us and to show us love.”
“We deserve love too and will wish people can help cater for us to realize our dreams,” he added.
In her welcoming speech, the Acting Executive Director of Jenx Youth Hub International, Mrs. Winifred Nana Yaa Otoo described it as tragic “that while some people own so many houses that they have to hire someone to keep track of it for them, some people have to sleep on the sidewalk because they can’t afford rent. Unfortunately, not a lot of people realize this. The common notion is that homelessness is somewhat a choice. That the homeless deserve what they are going through because they didn’t study hard or look for a job. But no, it isn’t like that at all.”
The Jenx foundation currently has a number of youth they are paying and seeing through school and skills training and is also partnering the SteelCore Company to build a world-class housing facility that would serve as a shelter for homeless youths and also to provide a space for counseling, boot camps, vocational learning, leadership and entrepreneurship workshops.
