SMILING CHILDREN TOWN

The project targets the street children of Soddo, Ethiopia.
The "street children" are the last ones among all.
They cannot be adopted for different reasons nor may they participate in projects of either national or international adoptions. Orphaned, abandoned, or rejected by their families, they do not have access to long distance adoptions and shall not benefit from medical treatment nor going to school or learning a trade.
Their destiny is to stay on the street, with no prospective or possibility of a better future.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest and most beautiful countries on the African continent, but it is also one of the poorest. It is very large, more than 3 times the size of Italy, and has a population of 76 million people, mainly children, because the life expectancy is 45 years. It is number 167 of 180 in gross domestic product per capita, and it is the fifth in the world for human development index.

 

Soddo is a large village of over 100,000 inhabitants, located about 400 km south of Addis Ababa. It is in the Wolayta region, just before Lake Abaya in the South of the country and as it often occurs in all the Southern areas in the world, the poorest.
There is only one asphalt road in Soddo and the houses are mostly made of mud and straw and have sheet metal roofs. A few houses have electricity; almost none have running water. The population lives on stock rearing, agriculture, and trade. Many of the inhabitants of Soddo live below the poverty line. Malaria, typhoid, HIV and TB are very widely spread. There are children everywhere and as you can see all over the world, they are smiling and happy despite everything.

 

Street Children

There are about 2000 street children in Soddo.
These are children who, for different reasons, are living on the street trying to survive daily.
There are many different causes of the abandonment of these children; death of parents, escaping on their own to find food for themselves that their families cannot provide, being refused by the father or mother in the occasion of a new marriage, a false search for freedom, or being hit by a serious illnesses (like epilepsy, autism, or any psychiatric problem).
Street children only have what they wear, often not even shoes or clothes, they sleep under the porches of "stores" or, during the rainy season, in large pipes of sewers (rare). They try to survive by obtaining something to eat every day: stealing and selling to the market what they find on the street, even an empty plastic bottle has great value, doing small jobs like selling brushes (wooden skewers of eucalyptus to clean your teeth), watching animals, transporting goods or unloading trucks, or going to fetch water at the source, often located many kilometers away. The most fortunate ones have only one of the 4 diseases and nobody attends school.

 

The Center

The Catholic Mission of Soddo received a private donation to build a large and modern Center on the hill of Golla, in the outskirts of Soddo, to give hospitality to 200 street children and daily assistance to as many as possible. The projects aims to try, where possible, to reintegrate the children into their original family.
In 2008, the Bishop of Woylata, Monsignor Rodrigo Mejia, entrusted the management of the Center to Marcella Montresor, an educator of great international experience.
During the past two years, Marcella has completed the construction of the Center and has started operating the support project to the street children.
The collaboration of Asmalash Ayza, named Buzuaywu (or Busajo as you would write in Italian) was extremely precious.
He was first approached as a street child himself and then was involved in the handling of the project that aims to help and host about 200 children, out of which about 80 (October 2010) are already taking part in the full time schedule of the project. Buzuaywu himself was a street child, and now he is like an older brother for all the children. He approaches them, solves all the bureaucratic difficulties with their families, takes care of them, encourages them, and when necessary, he scolds them. The meaning of his name in Amharic is "the one who sees everything," now you can understand why. For these children, Marcella and Buzuaywu represent their only hope of survival and a future

 

The Educational Project

The principle of operating for the project named SMILING CHILDREN TOWN is not charity.
Both educators responsible for the project and us founders of the "Association Busajo" consider that charity alone has negative effects in the long run. The free contributions given to any population will, in fact, never be sufficient to solve the problems of poverty, disease, and cultural and economic backwardness of the African continent. This mode demeans and mortifies human dignity and does not build anything for the future.
In a population that is experiencing a demographic explosion like in Ethiopia, no big amount of resource will ever be enough.
Our belief is that first of all we must invest in the education and training of the younger generation; giving them the cultural bases and teaching them trades that may, in the future, make them self-sufficient.
The project for the street children in Soddo, therefore, has set specific rules and the kids who decide to join the project must approve, accept, and follow them.

The first rule concerns their dignity as people; the children must stop stealing or begging (their primary means of subsistence), they must take care of their body, wash themselves regularly, and help each other.
Those who accept this first rule, after a trial period that can vary from six months to a year, are entitled to a roof to sleep under, two meals a day, clothes, and shoes.
Nearly all children have health problems; some diseases are more serious than others. The Center guarantees their basic health care. Children must also commit themselves to attend school regularly, while the older boys must attend professional classes. Also, they cannot drink any alcohol or smoke. For this purpose, they are encouraged to practice different sports. We believe that playing sports is valuable in their development of social skills and maturation. The main principle is that they have to earn the help they are offered.
The Center accepts children of all religious beliefs or origin, without discrimination whatsoever and respects the choices of any religion.