Working to reunite separated children

12 January 2012

 

“I love reading – that’s what I like to do, but I’m not too good at it’, says 12-year-old Thony,* sitting at the big dining table at World Vision’s Interim Care Centre for separated children. ‘I read in English, French, Creole, whatever. Spanish, too.”

Thony is bright. His aptitude for languages is astounding. But his multilingualism has arisen out of heartbreaking circumstances.

“At the border I learnt Spanish, some English. I had to, to get by.” Like many other children, Thony had spent more than a year working at the huge market at Malpasse, on the Haiti/Dominican Republic border, after fleeing an abusive childhood in Haiti. “My mother went to Santo Domingo, she said to take care of some business over there, but she never came back”, he explains. “I was 10 years old.”

Thony was sent away to live with another family, where he was trapped in domestic labour. “They put me with a family who was treating me badly. The lady was making me carry buckets of water every day. It was a long distance from the house to the place where I collected the water. Her children were beating me all of the time.

“I don’t remember exactly when I ran away from the bad family. Went I went to Malpasse I was working at the market with some guys. I was helping them load the trucks. When they gave me money I saved it so I could pay for my own school. I went to school in Jimani and then in Malpasse, as well. Sometimes I was sleeping at a friend’s house so I didn’t have to sleep on the street. My friend looked after me. There were lots of children working at the market.” At 10 years old, alone and miles from home, Thony sacrificed food and clothing in order to pay for his beloved education, while living in extremely unsafe conditions. Many predators lurk in Jimani, ready to exploit children like him.

Thony remembers well the day he was approached by a staff member from World Vision’s Family Tracing and Reunification (FTR) programme. “I met one of the World Vision case workers. His name was Fleurimond. He told me he had a place to bring me, and I came here. It is better here. They are treating us very well. We play sport every morning. I like playing soccer. I don’t have to work anymore, and I still go to classes.”

As Thony stays in the safety of the centre, receiving nutritious meals, health care and psychosocial support and participating in educational activities, World Vision’s FTR staff are working to reunite him with his family. If they can’t, or if this is not deemed a viable option for child protection reasons, they will find him long-term accommodation with an approved foster family.

“I’d like to finish with my school and to learn something that will help me in my life”, says Thony. “I don’t want to go to the streets and work in the market anymore. I’d like to be going to school every day. That’s all I want. Nothing else.”

The family tracing and reunification programme has monitored the wellbeing of more than 2,000 children and reunited 1,042 with their families.

*Name has been changed

 

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