Work With Street Children/ Youth at Risk Projects in South Africa

Project At A Glance

Locations: Cape Town Start point: Cape Town End point: Cape Town Duration: 2-12 weeks Hours: 30-40 hours per week Food: Local meals (3 times a day) Room: Host family or hostel Date: First and Third Wednesday of each month

Project Summary

Children are roaming the streets of South Africa. These misguided children usually end up involved in a negative cycle of life. Many of these children are without parents, doing drugs, walking in the streets and get caught up in petty, and sometimes more serious, crimes. IFRE’s street children program aims to children. Most of these children are runaways, fleeing substandard living environments for many different reasons – verbal, emotional and physical abuse among other problems. Their ages vary from 13 to 18. Many of these children feel hopeless; they have no self esteem and desperately need love, care, life-skills and a feeling of acceptance. create a daily routine, which includes attending school, and demonstrate that there is hope for these

Skills/Qualifications Needed

There are no specific qualifications required to join this street children/children at-risk project. However, volunteers must be positive role models and hold an optimistic life outlook. They should be enthusiastic about caring for others and empathetic to unfortunate and often dire situations.

Volunteer Responsibilities

In addition to day-to-day support, IFRE’s street children project also offers courses concerning life-skills, performing arts, career development, leadership training and entrepreneurial skills. There is also a Day Care Centre providing education and a vegetable garden as an income source. Volunteers’ help and support are expected in every aspect of this project.

Volunteers’ daily activities may include teaching English, helping with homework and teaching basic conversational English. Volunteers will help with supporting recreational and artistic activities with the objective of educational learning (i.e. reading stories, performing puppet shows, caring for and playing with the children or organizing and developing sports activities). Additional assistance is needed with supporting in the kitchen/helping to serve lunch in the dining room and assisting with location-specific duties: routine building maintenance, construction, etc.

Note: In South Africa, many of our volunteer projects are based in rural communities, sometime located a great distance from the city limits of Cape Town. In each local community, we support multiple projects such as orphanages, schools, HIV/AIDS project, hospital etc. Volunteers will help or participate in more than one project during their experience. This multi-tasking presents a more varied volunteering experience and the extra help is greatly appreciated by the community.

Room/Food/Supervision

IFRE arranges accommodations and food (3 local meals/day) for the duration of your volunteer project. During orientation and training program, volunteers stay in our hostel in Cape Town. Our hostel is located in the heart of the city giving volunteers easy access to all parts of the city. Volunteers stay with a host family (aka “homestay”) during the volunteer program. Our host families are socially respected and are well versed in the art of hosting international volunteers. Host families offer a safe home, private rooms (occasionally rooms will be shared with other same-gender volunteers) and shared bathroom facilities with running water.

Volunteers will receive three meals of South African cuisine each day. Breakfast normally consists of cereal and toast; lunch is packed to take to your project and dinner is a nutritious home cooked local meal (meat & vegetables, rice or potatoes & salad). Host families provide typical meals that are traditional to South Africa.. Throughout the volunteer project, our local staff stays in contact with volunteers with either face-to-face visits or via email/telephone. IFRE’s main office is in Cape Town and our in-country coordinator serves as a point of contact for local volunteers. If project placement is very far from our main office, then our local staff members maintain communication by email and/or phone and the local project director will serve as a volunteer’s contact. Upon program placement, personal placement documents provide specific details of accommodations and project.