Offering a safety net of support

Fourteen-year-old Mkude has no parents. He lives with his elderly grandfather in the Morogoro Rural District of Tanzania. In spite of his tiny frame, he earns just a few pence each day by carrying heavy loads and selling plastic bags to buy enough food to keep himself and his grandpa alive.
When Mkude first met Cama’s District Representative Tukaeje Habibu (shown in centre of photo), he had never had the chance to go to school. His ragged T-shirt and dirty shorts were the only clothes he owned. He could afford neither the uniform nor the stationery to go to primary school.

But earlier this year, Tukaeje and the members of Cama – a growing network of 4,700 young women who have graduated from school – stepped in to provide Mkude with a new uniform and stationery so that he could finally enrol in school.

Thanks to the Camfed-supported Safety Net Fund, Mkude now has some decent clothes to wear so that he is no longer excluded from school by poverty. Now he is able to catch up with the years of studying that he has missed.

“As Cama members in Morogoro Rural District, we want to help children like these,” says Tukaeje, who works hard to identify children in her area who are most in need of support, both boys and girls.

Camfed’s programme officer Naomi Lovett explains: “The Safety Net Fund is in place so we can respond to vulnerable children’s needs - whether they are boys or girls. We can stop children from dropping out of school or help them to enrol. Some children might just need a T-shirt in order to get back to school…”

The Camfed-supported Safety Net Fund scheme has taken on particular urgency in the Iringa Rural District of Tanzania, where a searing drought is creating a growing food crisis. The next possibility of any food to add to the district’s depleted food supplies is not until next year’s harvest - May 2007.

Teachers from the region have told Camfed that this is the worst drought they have ever seen. According to their reports, children are frequently too weak to walk to school. It’s not uncommon for teachers to find their pupils asleep on the ground outside their classrooms. Some schools are providing porridge for their pupils. Often, this is the only food the children eat from one day to the next.

The Safety Net Fund is crucial in crises like this because it uses local networks of Cama members, parents, teachers and community members to identify children who are in danger of dropping out of school. Once children have a place in school, they have the safety net of the school system that will be able to monitor their welfare.

“If children drop out of school, they’re beyond any help available,” explains Camfed’s Naomi Lovett. “They become invisible to the services that can help.”