The future is not a bright one for the street kids of Kenya, but it’s a future we can help change.

BTO’S christmas appeal FOR Kenya

Childhood should not be spent on the streets, in a warzone, collecting scraps from rubbish tips to sell for food and drugs. Childhood should not be spent running to avoid being beaten, sometimes to death. The future is not bright for the street kids of Kenya, but it’s a future which we can help to change.

With the end of year celebrations, family gatherings and thoughts of gifts coming to the forefront, we come to you with our Christmas appeal to help us raise just over $35,000 for the street kids of Kenya.

Life on the streets is scary.

One estimate, by the Consortium of Street Children (CSC), an international charity, suggests the number of children living on the street throughout Kenya could be as high as between 250,000 and 300,000, including 60,000 in Nairobi alone.

‘Everybody needs to think about the way the street children of Kenya have been treated. Why they’re living on the streets, and suffering on the streets’, Lenore Boyd said. ‘These kids are traumatised. They are kids who had huge suffering, they’re abandoned… going to the streets is an act of despair’. Lenore Boyd, a renowned Australian artist is the founder and director of Alfajiri Street Kids, our in-country partner.

BTO’s Alfajiri Street Kids program provides a safe haven for young people who are living on the streets. They are encouraged to attend her workshops away from the slums, the danger and the drugs, to draw, paint, and sketch.

What will $35,000 achieve?

It will empower lives.

Our aim is to build a drop in centre, just like we did, with resounding success,  in Ethiopia, and implement an outreach program to provide a safe haven for the kids, away from a life on the streets.

More than just a safe haven where these street children can drop in to seek assistance, counseling, learning and emergency accommodation, our new drop in centre will house Lenore’s Art workshop which is critical to the success of the program.

It is through the Art Workshop that the needs of each child are identified and then established where best to place them – either into a recovery program or to enroll them in school. Before they are absorbed fully by BTO & Alfajiri, research is undertaken to try and trace their families or relatives and to understand their situation.

The children are monitored by observing their progress and consistency in attending the Art Workshop over a period of time, along with their desire to be empowered and transformed.

We need your help!

Don’t forget the world’s most vulnerable children this Christmas, when the spirit of giving is at the forefront of your minds.Your gift, no matter how small, to these children this festive season may, literally, be the gift of life. 

Donate to our Christmas appeal here.