Last week we launched our Transition to Independent Living (TIL) Programme at Beth Uriel and Marsh Memorial Homes in Cape Town, with 15 young people who are preparing to leave care and live independently. Each one has been carefully matched with a volunteer mentor who have begun to work with them on a one to one basis, meeting each week.

Earlier in February, we held training workshops for the new mentors, under the superb guidance of Merieke Heinkens, a Social Worker at Beth Uriel. The mentors come from a variety of backgrounds and are excited about the opportunity they have to sow into these young lives at such a crucial age and stage.

Anna Telford of Butterfly Films, has put together a 5 minute documentary on OTSK, which includes an interview with one of the youth in the programme. We hope to make it available on this website in the near future, so watch this space!

An exclusive lunch is being planned in London as a fundraiser for OTSK in March, where the documentary will have its first screening together with a PowerPoint presentation by Michelle Potter, who will be in the UK until the 20th March. If you would like to help OTSK to raise funds, Michelle could make a similar presentation at your place of work or to an arranged group of friends, then please contact us at fundraising@offthestreetkids.org to set a date.

Thank you for your support!

Living in a culture of easy abundance, it is easy to take for granted convenience items, such as the alarm clock. It even seems odd to call an alarm clock a convenience item, given the abuse that many of us inflict upon our poor alarm clocks daily just for performing their given function.

But you may recall a story that Michelle posted this summer about a young man from the Mamelani workshop, who had left care at 18 and had recently started his first internship. When asked how things were going, he said that he had learned a lot and was very happy with the job, but he confessed that he had not been sleeping well. He had to wake up at 4:30 every morning to arrive at work on time, and because he had no alarm to set he was terrified of sleeping late and missing work. He would only allow himself to doze off before he’d awake with a start, and would end up spending most of the night watching the clock until it was time to get up.

Stories like this are humbling, because these young people are humble, and hardworking, and want nothing more than to be given the chance to find their place in the world. They are estranged from their families and communities, and without support many will end up back on the streets for lack of any other options.

We are excited by the role that this website will play in serving the young people as both a resource and an outlet for expression. The five boys currently participating in the pilot project already have shown great interest in the website and the possibilities it presents. We hope that this website and blog will be a collaborative effort. Just as they help to shape the pilot program, we hope that these boys help shape the goals and features of this website to best serve their needs and the needs of others like them who will face the same decisions and challenges when they turn 18.

For supporters, donors and potential donors all over the world, we encourage you to read this blog regularly and participate. Share your thoughts and ideas, post comments to the blog posts, join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter. The website will highlight specific contributions you can make along the way to help the program grow and expand. The Donate page lists several ways you can help fund the organization right now to help launch the pilot program. You can be the extended support network that these young people lack and that most of us take for granted.

For the three of us, working on this website has been the most rewarding and humbling experience we have ever had. We are awed by the selflessness of these young people and their willingness to help younger children in the same circumstances. We feel blessed to be living in an age when the internet makes it so easy to reach people a half a world away; regardless of age, geographical distance, culture, and situation, we are all virtual neighbors. We hope, in some small way, to enrich the lives of these young people just as they have enriched ours.

Kelly Eagan, Alison Groves, and Sarah Peters

Our programme is focusing on one to one mentoring. I meet with each one weekly where we discuss their hopes and their concerns about independent living and together we set targets for the future. We have developed a pack that we are working with to take them through the practical steps needed when preparing to leave home and the support will continue once they have left. Loneliness and isolation are two big problems for these young people so we need to help them keep themselves occupied in addition to finding a job and somewhere to live.

To complete the team a number of local volunteers have joined us. They bring invaluable knowledge and experience of Cape Town and its diverse cultures and languages (there are eleven official languages spoken in South Africa!). The volunteers are sourcing important contacts and helping us shape the programme further. I have also asked them if they would like to write blog entries as I think it would be interesting for you to hear from them their experience of OTSK.

Thank you for your support and interest in our work. For further information please email us at: info@offthestreetkids.org.

Best wishes,

Michelle Potter

The images used on this website are not exclusively those of OTSK projects, people or events

He was asked what the highs and lows of his week had been. He said he found it difficult being new and not knowing much, but that he was learning a great deal and he would give us more feedback next week.

He then mentioned that getting up at 4.30am was a bit difficult. He said he can only allow himself to half fall asleep and that he often wakes at around 2am and then he is too afraid to go back to sleep so he sits and stares at the clock until it is time for him to leave for work. He finally told us that he doesn’t have an alarm clock so he is fearful that if he falls back to sleep he will sleep through and be late for work.

He did not come to the meeting with the intention of sharing the fact that he does not have an alarm clock, neither was he there to ask us to buy him one. I have never before come across people with so much humility. They have so much to teach me.

Internships are sourced for the youth in the programme and they are paid a stipend of 1,500 Rand per month. The youth gain valuable work experience and, if they perform well, a good reference.

We have to weigh up the options before deciding what the best way forward is. If the youth move into the suburbs in a shared house, with no support, having lived in a children’s home where their food was cooked and their laundry was done for them for a number of years, they will be away from the peer pressure but how will they care for themselves?

There is also the cost implication; a ready made shack can be purchased in Cape Town for between 250GBP – 300GBP. Some of the youth have expressed their desire to have a home they can call their own, and living in a rented house does not provide them with the permanence they need. If they are lucky enough to find somebody to contribute towards their accommodation, if they rent, they once again only have a short term solution. Much to consider…

For those of you who may need some clarification on the donation process, here are a few of the questions we are seeing online:

Q. I do not have a UK based bank account, can I still donate?
A. Yes, of course! Justgiving will indeed transfer the currency of your country of origin to Pounds, so there is no need to worry on that front.

Q. In her message, Gillian has donation amounts listed in USD, but Justgiving only accepts donations in GBP. What should we do?
A. Justgiving allows you to donate in any currrency and they will transfer the amount into Pounds. If you would like to know how much your donation is in your currency, go to the Justgiving website, click on `help’, `donating’ and `I live outside the UK. Can I donate to a Justgiving fundraising page?’ – here Justgiving offers a link to a currency conversion site which will translate your currency into Pounds. For those of you who are interested in a signed picture from Gillian – go ahead and set up your monthly payments based on the currency conversion for that day and please ensure you leave your contact details so that we can forward your signed photo once we have received six payments from you.

Q. Can I specify the length of my monthly donations?
A.Currently with Justgiving there is no way to tell the system “I’d like to donate £X for eight months”. If at some point you need to end your monthly donations, you can do so manually under your account in the Justgiving system.

We hope this alleviates some of the confusion we’ve seen online! If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment here or drop us an email and we will do our best to answer. Thanks a million to those of you who who have already donated to Off The Street Kids!

Best wishes from the fundraising team at Off The Street Kids.

Making a commitment to move into a children’s home means giving up independence, access to money and drugs and having to commit to going to school every day. I really have a great deal of respect for the children who make the choice to come off the streets and move into a home – it’s not an easy decision to make. Imagine being a child and having to make those kind of decisions. All the children I know in the UK only have to think about whether or not they have homework to do!

One of the boys I met in Cape Town, who was living in a children’s home, told me that at the age of 18 he had to leave and he was concerned about where he would go next. I did some research and discovered that many young people leaving residential care in South Africa end up back on the streets, and in many cases in prison because the state does not support them.

I am now in South Africa working with some great people who feel very passionately about these young people. We are developing a programme to provide them with the support that most of us got from our parents when we left home. We are piloting the programme and we are offering support to a group of young people who are preparing to leave and some who have already left residential care. I will continue to post news on this site so please keep checking for updates.

Michelle Potter is the Executive Director of Off The Street Kids.

There are a number of children’s homes providing care for under 18s in South Africa. However, when they have to leave at the age of 18 often they have no choice but to go and live on the streets because they have neither the skills to support themselves nor a home to return to.

Research has shown that, ill equipped to live by legitimate means, too often they end up in prison after falling into a downward spiral of drugs and crime.

Our goal is to help them develop their skills, further their education and provide them with somewhere to live, in order for them to participate in society as independent, mature and responsible adults.