Page 26 - ROTO Magazine Winter 2022.pub

Rotary Magazine for District 1210

Lusaka’s Street Children helped by Rotarian Sylvia

Eccleshall Rotarian Sylvia Keris, has recently returned from a
volunteering project trip to Zambia with the charity Mission
Direct, where she was part of a team working with the charity's
established project partners called Footprints - who help street
children on the city streets of Lusaka.

The project was originally postponed from its 2020 date, due to
Covid restrictions, but having been rearranged for the Autumn of
2022, Sylvia was keen to help again hands-on in the development
work she has a passion for. Back in Staffordshire, Sylvia is an
Ambassador for the charity The Buddy Bag Foundation - that
helps children with a backpack of essential items, after they have
been taken to safety away from domestic abuse. So knowing that
many of the children she would be helping on Lusaka's streets
had suffered abuse at home, or had been trafficked/abducted -
and were then vulnerable to more violence on the streets,
(resulting in some teenage girls then having babies living with
them on the streets) - Sylvia wanted to use her skills and volunteer experience from previous overseas
work, in UK schools and with other charities to help children in Lusaka.

Besides offering support on the streets, which the volunteers sometimes found very challenging, the
Footprints team also visited outreach project services offering rehabilitation and safe spaces to street
children, with Sylvia and other team members donating
medical supplies and other aid items they filled their
suitcases with.
In a lighter context, they also helped in schools in different
townships, including Mississi compound - where Sylvia
took a lesson and distributed letters to pupils at Eneless
Patmoss school, that were written prior to her departure by
some pupils in 2 schools in Eccleshall, Letters were written
back to the Eccleshall school pupils, which will help
children here to understand more about Zambian culture,
and about its children, and some issues of poverty and
development, and how attending school is the main way to
break the cycle of poverty.

26 ROTO WINTER 2022