About
Amani Children’s Home is committed to reducing the number of children living on the streets in Tanzania by providing a nurturing place for homeless children to heal, grow, and learn. In addition to providing long-term care, Amani aims to reunite children with their relatives when possible and to equip their families with the tools they need to be self-sustainable. Amani is dedicated to creating a path for each child that leads to a future filled with hope.
Friends of Amani (FOA) is an international network of volunteers united in Amani’s mission. Friends of Amani teams are committed, caring people who work together to raise support and awareness for the Amani children in their home countries. The Friends of Amani Australia was formed for the purpose of raising funds to promote the health, welfare, and education of children and their families through the Amani Children’s Home. We participate in a growing global community, brought together to support the Amani Children’s Home in Tanzania.
We are an Australian proprietary company, and commenced in 2010.
Our ACN is 142 585 555
Our ABN is 54 142 585 555
Our ATO endorsement as a tax concession charity is pending
Our deductible gift recipient status is pending
The objectives of Friends of Amani Australia are:
Raise money for the charitable purpose of the Amani Children’s Home, located in Moshi Tanzania;
To undertake fundraising activities to generate funds for the fulfilment of the objectives of the Company;
To promote the Objectives of the Company;
To promote the Objectives, Mission, Purpose, and work in general of the Amani Children’s Home.
What Amani Does
Giving Primary Care
Amani provides a safe and loving home, nutritious meals, and medical care to homeless children in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Amani’s trained caregivers make sure that each child rescued from the streets is given love and attention as well as important life skills, restoring hope to their lives.
The children receive three healthy meals a day. A typical meal is rice and beans with a side of cooked spinach. Many children arrive at Amani malnourished from living on the streets. With good, nutritious food, they quickly become healthy and active.
Medical care is an important service that Amani provides to the children. Amani has a full time nurse who cares for all the children’s medical needs, from bandaging scrapes and bruises to treating more serious illnesses like malaria, TB and HIV. She gives weekly health lessons to the children on topics such as personal hygiene, STDs and nutrition.
There’s a real family atmosphere at Amani, with the older children taking care of the younger ones. Amani caregivers have created a cheerful, happy place that warmly welcomes children who have faced many hardships in their lives.
Educating Children
Because our goal is to develop responsible, self-reliant young adults, Amani is committed to providing an education for each child we work with. The Amani children are educated through a variety of programs.
Amani supports children in local primary and secondary schools. Because of the often prohibitive expense of going to school as well as the many families who need their children to tend farms and livestock, only 54% of Tanzanian children complete primary school. We sponsor the education of children who live at Amani as well as the children who we have reunited with families in the community.
Many children rescued from a life on the streets have missed considerable amounts of time in their education. It isn’t an option to place them in classes with children their own age who have gone to school continuously. Amani’s Alternative Education Program provides children with a safe place to study and learn. The teachers at Amani have created a special fast-track curriculum that takes into consideration the unique needs of our kids. Last year, the program was officially registered by the Tanzanian government, which means that our students are able to sit for the same secondary school entrance exams as children who attend state-run schools.
Finally, Amani supports older children in vocational training programs. Children learn skills that will unlock opportunities for their futures. They may study carpentry, electrical repair, mechanics, or even traditional art and drumming!
Counseling and Caregiving
Amani’s Upendo (Love) program was designed to ensure that every child in our care receives individual love and attention. The children meet regularly in groups of four with their Upendo group leader, one of the Amani caregivers. These small groups serve as family units. The children are encouraged to discuss their ideas, feelings, and concerns. They tell the caregiver if there are any problems with other children or if there’s anything they need, like a new pair of shoes or a toothbrush.
The Upendo groups also have topical discussions on issues like honesty, working hard in school, and helping others – the kinds of lessons the children would be learning if they were with their parents. Upendo groups are one way that Amani ensures that each child in our care receives personal attention and love.
HIV/AIDS Program
Tanzania has an estimated HIV infection rate of 8%. That means it’s critical for every Tanzanian to know how the virus is spread and how to avoid becoming infected. This is especially important for the Amani children and youth, many of whom have lost parents to HIV/AIDS. Amani addresses this important issue with our kids through:
Education: Amani’s nurse teaches weekly health classes, where she dispels common myths aboutHIV and equips the students with facts. Health class also includes discussions about other important topics, such as hygiene, nutrition, and dental care. In addition, each month volunteer HIV/AIDSteachers come to Amani to give lessons, using creative methods to help the children understand and remember.
Testing and Counseling: As we discuss these issues openly in class, the nurse encourages children to be tested and emphasizes how important it is to know your HIV status. When children voluntarily choose to be tested, she and another caregiver accompany them to the testing place, where the child also receives counseling.
Treatment: If a child tests HIV+, Amani is committed to helping them live healthy, strong lives full of the same opportunities that every other child at Amani gets. They receive antibiotics and/or antiretroviral medicine depending on their health condition. Amani has a strict policy of confidentiality concerning those children living with HIV/AIDS.
Sports and Play
Amani provides children with many opportunities to learn and grow through numerous physical activities.
Drumming and dancing is one of the Amani children’s favorite pastimes. They love jumping and dancing to the rhythm. Each week Iddi, a veteran Tanzanian acrobat, teaches the kids new routines. The children are proud of their skills and love to perform in front of an audience.
Another favorite pastime of the Amani children is soccer. Amani has its own soccer team of talented boys and girls who practice everyday. The Amani team plays in area tournaments and scrimmages against other local teams.
Reuniting Families
Amani is not an orphanage. We believe that the best place for a child to grow up is in a safe and loving family and not in an institution. We therefore aim to reunify children into the homes of extended family members, giving kids the chance to spend the rest of their childhood with an aunt, uncle, or grandparent.
The extended family provides children with long-term personalized care and allows them to grow up within their own culture and traditions. Amani views family reunification as the most sustainable solution for the tragedy of child homelessness.
Locating family members is often a challenging task in Tanzania, where roads are unmapped and unnamed, and only a small minority of the population has access to a telephone or even electricity. Amani’s social workers travel all over the country, searching for children’s family members. Because extended family bonds are strong in Tanzania, many families are willing to care for young relatives in need. If a child’s relative is able to provide a safe and loving home for that child, but cannot afford to feed and educate them, Amani will assist the family with the child’s food and education expenses to make it possible for the child to live with them.
Outreach to the Streets
The children at Amani have been rescued from life on the streets. While every child has his own unique story of the hardships that drove him to the streets, the lives of all homeless children in Tanzania are full of fear, hunger, and danger.
Amani’s Street Educators go to the streets of Moshi town and nearby Arusha five nights a week to meet with the children who spend their nights sleeping in drainage ditches and back alleys. Because many of the children have been physically and sexually abused, they are cautious about trusting adults. Our Street Educators take time to build a friendship with the children, telling them that there is a safe place where they will be fed and protected, given clothing, an education and love. The children make a decision for themselves to accept the offer of rescue and to come to Amani.
Amani’s nurse also goes to the streets and offers medical care to the children living there. For many of the children, this is the first time they’ve ever seen a trained medical caregiver.
How To Help
Donate
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Bank Deposit Donation
Donate funds directly to Friends of Amani Australia at
Friends of Amani Australia
ANZ Bank
BSB 013332
Account 250008523
FAQ
Who started Amani and how?
Amani Children’s Home was established September, 2001, by local Tanzanians to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population of street children in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. They named the new home “Amani,” which means peace in Swahili. Life on the streets is terrifying and dangerous for children, and from the very beginning Amani has been a haven of peace for children who are homeless. Amani is proud to have been founded by locals and, to this day, almost all of the staff, leadership and Board are indigenous Tanzanians. We believe that the local community knows its own needs and the best ways to address them.
Why are there street children in Tanzania?
The reasons children go to the streets are unique to their individual situations. Often there isn’t one simple reason why a child is on the streets. Rather, a combination of multiple factors drive children to a life on the streets, including poverty, neglect, the breakdown of the family, losing one or both parents to HIV/AIDS or other prevalent diseases, and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.
The rights of women and children are rarely recognized in Tanzanian society. A lack of education and a fear of reprisal actions prohibit them from voicing these rights. Tanzania has signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but has failed to enact a domestic child protection law to uphold the principles in this international treaty.
Local inheritance traditions reinforce women and children’s inferior position to men in the social hierarchy. An increasing divorce rate in Tanzania has contributed to a large number of boys being driven out of their homes by stepmothers who feel they pose a threat to her own children’s inheritance.
What happens to street children?
Without help from organizations like Amani, street-children are trapped in a cycle of poverty and neglect that few are able to escape. They lack the basic necessities of food, health care, and a safe place to stay. Like many other Tanzanian children, homeless children are unable to afford an education, and they miss out on the important life skills that are usually learned in the home. Children living on the street face the constant prospect of physical, verbal and sexual abuse from peers and adults. Sniffing glue and petrol is a common way to dull hunger pains and blot out the violence they face on a daily basis.
Other children, those with special needs such as Daudi, face an even harsher reality. Fortunately, he was brought to Amani where he is thriving today. The problems associated with street children extend beyond the plight of the children themselves. The entire society is impoverished by the lost potential of homeless children and youth. In the long term, street children end up unskilled and jobless, often resorting to crime.
How many kids live at Amani? How old are they? Are there both boys and girls?
Amani is not an orphanage. We are committed to helping reunify children with their relatives whenever possible. The number of children living at Amani changes from day to day, as more children turn to Amani for help and as our social workers reunify children with their family. On average the number of children living at Amani stays between 70-100 children, both boys and girls, between the ages of 6 and 17. In addition to the children living at Amani, we continue to support kids who used to be homeless who Amani’s social workers were able to reunify with relatives. In 2009, Amani supported 288 children, both at our center and throughout the Tanzanian community.
Is Amani affiliated with a religious denomination or organization?
Amani is committed to nurturing the children’s spiritual growth. However, Amani is not affiliated with any denomination or particular religious organization. There are several different religious organizations who have chosen to support us, both financially and by teaching and interacting with the children.
How is Amani funded?
Amani receives funding from three sources – foundations, businesses, and individuals – with the bulk of our funding coming from individuals. Every donor makes a difference. To learn more about how you can make a difference in the lives of homeless children in Tanzania, email us at chris@friendsofamani.org.au, or donate today.
How do I know I can trust Amani with my donations?
Amani is dedicated to the sound management and financial integrity. Amani is externally audited on an annual basis. Also, Amani is governed by an active external Board of Trustees – all of whom live in Moshi; none of whom receive payment for their role in Amani’s supervision. This is made up of men and women including: a German doctor, a Tanzanian social worker, and Indian priest, a British accountant, a Tanzanian management consultant, an Indian educations specialist and a Tanzanian human rights advocate.
How can I help?
There are several ways you can help. First of all, join our Monthly Sponsorship program. Sponsors commit to give monthly to Amani and provide a reliable source of support for the Amani children. Then, consider where you can spread the word about Amani – raising support from your business, church, or community group. You also may apply for membership with Friends of Amani Australia.
Contact
Contact Friends of Amani Australia at
Friends of Amani Australia
PO Box 3027
AUBURN
VIC 3123
Or complete the following form
