Water Project for Dogodogo Street Children Center

Normally, childhood time is synonymous with parental love, family protection, joy of first discoveries, leaving a harmonious and balanced life in society. Yet for thousands of children around the world this time is or will be, unfortunately, a sad and a dark memory that most of them try to delete, often in vain, once become adults.

Street children and children living and working in the streets too often live in miserable conditions and are subject to abuse of all kinds. Many of them suffer from various diseases because of their deplorable living conditions. Majority of them no longer attend school. As adults they end up illiterate, if at all they happen to survive hunger, thirst, dangerous and low-paying jobs, prostitution, sexual abuse, endemic diseases, social exclusion, police and judicial harassments, prison, cheap drugs, domestic work turned into slavery.

In many parts of the world, including East Africa, these vulnerable children have become easy targets for terrorist groups. The latter recruit from vulnerable kids notably street children by exploiting their vulnerability simply because they can easily agree to do anything in return for a little money. In Dar Es Salaam this phenomenon is called a time bomb; this means that there is a very serious threat to peace, order and law for the future.

Now Owned and managed by the Catholic Congregation of the Holy Ghost “Spiritans”, Dogodogo Multipurpose Training Center (DMTC) is a Street Children and Orphanage Center opened in 2003 to help most vulnerable children notably orphans and street children to regain their lost dignity. The DMTC is located at Bunju, Dar Es Salaam, about 2 km away from Dar-Bagamoyo Road. This year it has 78 children (boys and girls) aged between 13 and 17 years. Out of the 78 youths currently admitted at the DMTC, 37% were street children, 60% are orphans because of the HIV/AIDS, and 3% are separated from their families due to various family problems leading to putting the lives of the kids in danger. Each year the centre receives about 45 new children from similar backgrounds.

During their stay at Dogodogo Center, the children are provided with basic human needs notably food, shelter and health services. They also receive psychological and spiritual support to heal their inner wounds, specialized programmes for alphabetization and training on different life skills like electricity, carpentry, tailoring, welding, computer maintenance, fire fighting and rescue, etc. so that at the end of their formation at Dogodogo they may become productive citizens.

While strives to build a Tanzania in which all children are empowered to enjoy their basic rights to survival, development, protection and participation in society, this Dogodogo mission is, however, faced with challenges. Among many challenges facing the Centre, there is lack of funds to cater for daily educational needs like funds to renovate dormitories, classrooms, equip classrooms and workshops with various equipment needed for skills development like carpentry tools and machines, computers and tailoring machines.

Above all, the Centre is still experiencing an acute shortage of water. Despite of an attempt to harvest rain water whereby four ground storage tanks with total capacity of 100,000 liters were renovated and rain gutters were installed in nearly all the buildings of DMTC, the mentioned storage capacity versus multiple uses including irrigation for daily vegetables supply  leads to water shortage especially during dry season. Since the rain water harvested during rainy season cannot carter for all year water demand at DMTC notably during the dry months of September, October, November, December, January and February, Dogogodogo management team resolved to look into groundwater exploration. It therefore commissioned a Water Company based in Dar- es- Salaam to carry out the viability of exploitation of  underground water resource. The actual Geophysical Survey proceeded by detailed Reconnaissance Survey located availability of underground water at 150 meters. According to the pro-forma invoice from the same company, the projected budget to drill a 150m deep underground well stands at Tshs. 29,572,000 which is equivalent to Euro  11,829. The children at the Center will be very happy if your esteem organization will kindly help them have clean and safe water for their daily use.