Blog
Oruro - going in the right direction
October 17th, 2011
by
Ben Nolan
Oruro – described by one person as “worse than North Korea” and by another as “like something that has been in a disaster movie” – does not get a huge amount of visitors. This meant the projects were very excited to see us, and we were treated to a veritable feast of food, music, dancing and lots of speeches. We also got to go out on the street with the Oruro team – seeing how they went about trying to get children off the streets and back into mainstream society, it was an impressive system.
Before we went out on the streets we were treated to a presentation on the “Oruro street strategy”. I normally hate these “strategies” – everyone seems to have a different one, from Unicef to individual local governments, and they normally involve putting children into categories (phase 1 to 4 depending on just how “street” they are), and coming up with a plan that has the words “integral”, “community based” and “capacity building” in it – with it being much less clear is expected to carry out this grand plan. Oruro was different. Their strategy was beautiful in its simplicity, and as we found out later, great in its implementation:
- Go to areas where we know there are lots of street working children (they tend to live together in squats at night)
- Offer them food and drink; play some educational games with them. Basically, try and build up a relationship
- Direct these kids to a half-way house. In this case a church in the city centre that serves lunches twice a week. While the children are there they can get intensive psychological support, and also practical help – such as the correct papers – to get healthcare and re-enrolled in school.
- By showing these children that life can be better, re-integrate them back with their families (grandparents are often a good place), or into foster care, or into long term residential care.
We went out with José, the Oruro street worker, to see this in action. José is a young man who came alive when we met the teenagers. These were a group of 3 that were shining people’s shoes at the market in the city centre. They greeted José like an old friend and after he had handed out some coke and biscuits he started playing a game of “pairs” with them. Unfortunately this kept on being interrupted by people coming up and demanding their shoes be polished. They didn’t care about what José was trying to achieve – all they wanted was to pay the measly 12p it costs for a shoe shine.
There is something very demeaning and subjugating about shoe shining. The people having their shoes shined barely even look at the boys – they just point at their shoes before turning away, and then expect them to get on with it. It’s unpleasant to watch. You want to grab them by the collars and shout at them – “look, that’s a child there! Not a robot. Show some humanity, please”. One boy decided he would rather learn with José than polish a particularly rude man’s shoes – internally I cheered – that is step one achieved.
This lad was turning down the chance of an instant small reward in exchange for the hope of education. That eventually through this he could become something much more than a shoe shiner sat on the corner of the road.
From there we went to the projects. Everyone had prepared songs and dances. They were all taken very seriously by the girls involved, but for some reason they all seemed to have some token very small boys. These lads just never had a clue. They bumbled around, falling about off stage, fighting, and never going in the same direction as anyone else. It was hilarious.
The two days we spent in Oruro were very happy ones – all the projects we saw had only started a few years ago, after encouragement and support from Toybox money and partners. In one of the poorest areas of South America, you could see a community coming together to try and change things for the next generation. Sure, a lot of these projects were only working part time; they’re often not much to look at; and they are desperately in need of extra funding – but they were having such an impact on so many young lives.
So as we drove away from the dust cloud that envelopes Oruro – like a Tyrannosaurus Rex has stomped through the city, crushing a few buildings along the way – we felt hopeful and confident for the children in this city. Once you get past appearances it’s a really positive city, and one that is definitely going in the right direction.
Please do keep your comments and prayers coming. It’s lovely to get your feedback.
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