A Helping Hand

Children of the Eluxolweni Shelter for boys

The shelter that was once home to both Luthando and Bhulelani is the Eluxolweni Charitable Trust Child and Youth Care Centre, more popularly known as the Eluxolweni Shelter for Boys.

Here, many young boys from toxic and broken homes find refuge in this safe haven located in Old Station Yard, Grahamstown.

The centre’s main objective is to facilitate programmes and projects that bring relief and care to children who are abandoned, orphaned or living on the streets.

Children at this centre are offered a safe place to stay, nutritious meals and rehabilitation programmes that treat the children in a holistic way.

By law, once a child turns eighteen they are considered adult citizens who are able to fend for themselves.Many children who leave the shelter at eighteen don’t have anywhere to go. Having obtained only primary level education, which doesn’t allow for employment, many of them find themselves back on the streets continuing the vicious cycle of street living.

Linda Ngamlana shares the history of Amasango, the support it offers to needy children and her current goal to implement vocational skills learning in the near future.

As well as staying at the centre, the children also attend the Amasango Career School for street children.

Amasango is a special needs co-educational primary school that provides free education to children coming from difficult socio-economic circumstances.

This school was established in 1995 with just two shipping containers placed in the Eluxolweni grounds, to use as classrooms.

The majority of the children who attend Amasango are grossly age-inappropriate for their grades and have very low self-esteem. Many of them only reach grade seven by the age of eighteen.

This is due either to dropping out of other mainstream schools because of their inability to cope academically, or in other cases because of their lack of resources and inability to afford school fees.

Although praised by many as being the only two solid initiatives in place for street youth, both these organisations are only able to offer help up until the age of eighteen.

Click on the link below and have a look at where Amasango and Eluxolweni are located:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zt0rWsK_fn34.kM4AfOe5Vr_I