The Other Railway Children - Chapter 10 (extract) "Russia and Africa"

I met Alex Cooke from a small Isle of Wight based NGO called ‘Love Russia’ which supplemented the state budget in a number of children’s institutions in the 200 mile triangle south of Moscow down to Ryazan. Alex took me to Moscow and we visited a couple of emergency shelters for runaway and abandoned children in an area about 20 miles west of the city near a Russian space research station. Alex had developed a sound relationship with officials from the Russian Department of Education and there was an agreement that ‘Love Russia’s’ funds would be added to the basic budget for several centres to provide an improved diet, better furniture, health and dental facilities and games and toys.

We funded two of these shelters for a while and while in Moscow I was introduced to a senior pastor of the Russian Pentecostal church who had been in Siberia and had supported the growth of a Pentecostal church in Chita, Siberia, (in which is the railway junction where the Trans-Siberian Railway divides to Ulan Bator and China, and on to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok). This rapidly growing congregation (some 800 strong as I understood it) had found about 50 young boys on Chita station sheltering underground by the warm heating pipes to stave off the winter minus 40 degree temperatures. They had started working for these children providing an old bus as a food and soup kitchen and providing warm clothes and other support. Their bus was collapsing and needing renewal so we funded a replacement bus through the NGO’s UK partner, ARC.

Apparently the Russian Orthodox authorities in Chita had complained to the secular government that the ‘Helping Hands’ NGO as the church organisation was called, was making conversions and competing with the state church as a result of this humanitarian work and called on them to put a stop to it. Interestingly, the state authority said they’d think about it if and when the Russian Orthodox Church got round to doing something similar!

Our first foot in Africa was certainly made through the CSC via my relationship with Geoff Cordell, the new Director of ChildHope. He drew my attention to the dangerous situation for young girls round Nairobi city centre in Kenya, many of whom were at risk of indulging in casual prostitution to survive, often because they and their mothers had been displaced from their tribal lands by relatives following divorce or death of the husband. A British ex-pat, Martin Swinchatt, who ran an organisation called Pendekezo Letu working for such girls, met me when I was visiting my daughter Catherine, who was working with street children in the Kibera slum.

We began to fund part of Pendekezo Letu’s programme which involved offering girls a few months’ placement at a farm near Thika about 40 miles to the north, where they were rehabilitated while social workers belonging to the NGO assisted the mothers in finding legal income generation work so that the girls could continue their schooling on return from Thika. The contact point to find such girls was not really the railway station - after all one train each way to Mombasa hardly constituted a hive of activity to sustain such families - and they were more likely to be found hanging round the bus station and bulging matatu (minivan) transports and taxi ranks, looking for business.

Initially the NGO was working with 13-15 year olds but experienced resistance as the girls found they could earn too much and were loath to give up such income. Pendekezo Letu therefore started working with girls between 6 and 12 years of age, many being younger sisters of those they found in the city. They also extended the training time at Thika to ten months to ensure the success of the rehabilitation process and give time for the family situation back in Nairobi to be improved so the girls had a chance when coming back.

These various scattered initiatives - they could hardly be called a programme - nevertheless required attention and supervision and because of Pete Kent’s experience in Tanzania and development qualifications, we promoted him to be our Programme Officer for the ‘Rest of the World’, a rather grandiose title for picking up and supervising such a disparate group of projects. So far, most of these projects had been acquired in a reactive way - we had responded to requests for help and had provided funding. However, our trustees had learned from the Lottery Fund visit to WORD in India and were determined to be more than just a funding agency. This meant that we had to consider what our role could be outside of India and the UK and in early 2004 we held an Away Day at the Carphone Warehouse Head Office in London through our partnership with 'Get Connected'.

We had a full debate about the pros and cons of working in particular countries and felt that in the short term we should concentrate our resources to be more effective and go deeper in a few specific areas rather than spread our resources too thinly. We’d supported partners in 10 countries overall - India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Russia (including Siberia) and the UK - but we took a decision that for a couple of years we’d seek just two or three partners in each of Eastern Europe, Central America and East Africa as pilot projects and evaluate our experiences there in depth before deciding to concentrate on one additional major area in addition to India and the UK. Pete had the job of developing these pilot projects and we homed in on one in Moscow, an additional one in Guatemala, retaining our Mexico Juconi project, and three new partners in Kenya and Tanzania.