Back in Kinshasa with the street children.

After several years away from the Congolese capital, where, between 2017 and 2020, GSI Italia had run a programme to assist street girls, building an emergency shelter and launching night-time patrols and rescue operations for children on the streets of Kinshasa using two ambulances, the organisation is returning with an Italian ministerial project. AFRICA KIDS  The title of the project, which involves 5 Italian associations in CONGO , GANA and SIERRA LEONE   . The project in Congo has been entrusted to GSI, in partnership with the local organisation Oseper. The relationship and collaboration between the two organisations is long-standing and well-established. The 18-month programme involves the training and professional development of the association’s staff – youth workers, educators, psychologists and nurses – who provide care and support for over 300 street children housed in three different buildings in the capital, as well as covering the night-time service with ambulances bearing GSI Italia window decals. The project will also provide food and schooling for the children, who in Congo frequently lack official identity documents because their parents have never registered their births with the local authorities. The project will enable them to apply to the courts for recognition – a process that is financially burdensome but essential for their future social and working lives.

With the launch of the project, the Association arranged, in July, to provide two pieces of ‘hand luggage’ – containing around 30 kg of medicines – which were taken to the Congo by Oseper staff returning to Kinshasa from Italy. These medicines were needed to meet the needs of the children and patients at the small clinic that Oseper set up a few years ago in Kinshasa for the poorest and most destitute members of the population.