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While he was alive, Zawadi’s father worked hard. He had a good job that provided for his family, and though it was sad for his wife and four children when he passed away, they had means to survive.
They never expected what happened next. Zawadi’s relatives laid claim to all her father had left them, stealing their home and forcing Zawadi and her family out onto the streets.
Zawadi’s mother was too sick to fight; later, Zawadi would find out she was suffering from tuberculosis. At the tender age of five, Zawadi was sent to work on local farms, scrounging for what little she could get. As the eldest of her siblings, she was the family’s only hope for food.
Without access to medication, Zawadi’s mother soon died. Now all the siblings had were each other.
One night when the siblings were sleeping by the side of the road, a House Mother from our partners in Kenya spotted them. She notified the center’s legal team who intervened. Zawadi and her siblings were brought in and cared for; she and her sisters were given a safe home, access to food, and enrolled in school.
Now, Zawadi is entering her final year at the competitive Strathmore University in Nairobi, one of the very best universities in East Africa. She’s studying business and is developing a tech startup that aims to create local jobs in Nairobi for kids forced to live on the streets. She hopes this will allow them to save up for their education.
Zawadi is strong, powerful, and confident, and an advocate for those who need it most.
“Once you’re educated, you’re free” Zawadi says, now on the cusp of graduating. “This is the only thing. Knowledge, nobody will take knowledge from you. Everything they may take, but your knowledge is yours.”
“I have met people, I have listened to people speak, and I get information every time which is helping me move forward with my life… Most people who do not have access to education, once they’re given the opportunity, they do so well.”
Come, the man said. Have a meal.
Santi, age eleven, squinted his eyes and looked into the man’s face. The man seemed earnest, but was he telling the truth?
Santi had heard stories about other children on the streets, children who followed strangers like this and were forced into lives of servitude.
Just then Santi’s stomach rumbled. Hunger shot through him like he’d swallowed knives.
There had been few cars to wash this week and he had not been able to buy food. Ever since he’d left his mother to find work in the city of Quetzaltenango, he’d counted on washing cars to make a few pennies. At night he slept in boxes with other children. They’d all left even worse conditions at home, but it was hard to convince themselves that this was any better.
The man waited patiently. Santi couldn’t think anymore. The hunger was making him sick. He nodded, and the man smiled. Santi followed him, hoping he was doing the right thing.
Luckily, the stranger was trustworthy: he brought Santi to our partners in Guatemala who not only gave him food but his very own bed and a place in school.
Santi put on weight and started to excel in his classes. He graduated middle school, then high school. Before, Santi had been part of the staggering 61% of children in Guatemala forced to drop out of school, but now he became part of an even more unique statistic: he entered the 1% of those in Gautemala who go on to earn a university degree. He did so with a scholarship earned through his academic achievement.
Today, Santi is a middle school teacher. He could choose to be anywhere, but he’s back at the same school that took him in when he needed it most, teaching eleven year olds that their lives count and that they, too, deserve a seat at the table.
He’s an uncle, Qasim’s mother said, a distant uncle, so be on your best behavior and he’ll send you to school and make sure you’re always fed.
Food and an education were more than Qasim’s mother could give him, and even at the tender age of six Qasim knew he had to be brave. So when a man he’d never seen before picked him up from home to bring him to his far away relative, Qasim agreed. He hugged his mom and said he’d be good. He didn’t even cry when he said goodbye- he didn’t want to worry her. Qasim knew she was sending him away because a better life was ahead.
Yet the man never brought Qasim to his family. Instead, he was driven for hours to a lake where he was put on a boat. Then he was told to jump deep into the murky water to untangle fishing nets until his fingers cramped. This went on for hours.
That day, Qasim was trafficked. He stopped being a child as he became one of thousands of children forced to become the tiny, beating hearts sustaining the fishing industry on Lake Volta.
At first, Qasim thought he might be returned to his mother if he only worked hard enough and stayed alive. But nine years later, he was still on the lake, hauling nets, sick from hunger and trying to suppress years of abuse as he turned fifteen. Beatings with paddles had become routine; his hearing was permanently damaged from deep diving into the water to retrieve nets, and his body was covered in open wounds.
Qasim was rescued in March. He was given immediate medical care for his malnourishment and wounds, and then diagnosed with and treated for PTSD.
Finally, he was enrolled in school and began to receive the education he was promised so long ago.
Eager to catch up with peers he now calls friends, Qasim is taking night classes along with his daytime ones- he’s one of the most enthusiastic students at the center, and he’s known and loved by all who meet him. He’s first to volunteer when someone needs help and he plays soccer with the same kind of enthusiasm he brings to art class.
Qasim is thriving and finally, he’s home.
At age 11, Amina thought that nothing could be worse. The pain she felt when she lost her mother was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Every morning she woke up forgetting it had happened, and every morning the realization hit her like bricks. Her mother was dead. She would never hear her voice again, or see her smile, or run into her arms when her stomach rumbled from hunger. Somehow, her mother had made everything better and now she was gone.
Amina’s father was grief stricken but at least he and Amina had each other as they struggled to survive.
Then the unthinkable happened: a year later, Amina’s father died too. She was an orphan.
Amina briefly went to live with her sister, who was unable to pay the bills to keep her in school. So Amina went to work on a farm where she was paid next to nothing. The girls around Amina didn’t go to school either. Often married very young and giving birth to many children, it was clear they would never see the inside of a classroom again.
Amina’s elderly, impoverished grandfather intervened and insisted on taking her in. Though he could barely feed himself, never mind a growing child, he recognized that Amina was gifted. He knew that if she could only get an education, it would sustain her after he was gone. He was determined that she would go to school. Mustering all the fight he could, he got Amina to our partners in Malawi.
Amina was given a place at school and just as her grandfather predicted, she rose to the top of her class. With the consistency of a safe, happy life in the dorms and access to food and care, she was able to focus on her studies. Amina excelled. She went on to win a place at one of the top girls’ boarding schools in Malawi on academic merit and continued to flourish.
Seven years have passed since Amina arrived at our partner organization in Malawi and since then, her family’s dreams and her own have come true. Amina is now applying to nursing school so that she can become a midwife. She’s determined to give children who don’t have a mother the kind of love she got from her own.
Thanks to the love, care, and education that intervened in her own life, Amina is well on her way.