Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO), a local non-governmental organisation, has stressed on the need for stakeholders to work on prevention mechanisms that can deter children from living in the streets.

YONECO’s Board Chairperson for Programmes and Projects Committee Samuel Bota said this during the opening of a eight-day training for street outreach workers on Street-Smart in Lilongwe.

According to Bota, available evidence indicate that children are connected to the streets due to poverty.

“Available evidence indicate that children are connected to the street due to poverty, as a result of limited livelihood opportunities for daily subsistence; child-headed households as a consequence to orphan hood; parental neglect and other social factors including violence and abuse of children,” Bota said.

He added that during the training, participants will acquire various skills on how they can engage the children.

On his part, Master Trainer for Mobile School, Bram Van De Putte said in collaboration with YONECO, the project will assist in bridging the gap between the outreach officers and street-connected children.

“The tool has been proven to be very effective, we have been working in more than 50 countries now with a mobile school where there is a lot of countries in Africa and it has been proven to be effective because the school is going out to the place where the street connected children or hanging around,” he said.

One of the participants, Child Protection Officer responsible for Lilongwe Police Station Sub Inspector William Chirambo said he anticipates that the training will assist them enhancing their skills on handling street-connected children.

He said: “We expect to learn more especially when it comes to issues to do with street-connected children, we expect that we will enhance and increase the skills on how we going to be handling street-connected children.”

The eight-day training being offered in Lilongwe is first of its kind in Malawi as it is focusing on addressing education needs of children connected to the street using innovative ways.

Participants to the training have been drawn from YONECO and other stakeholders in the child protection like police, education, social welfare among others.

YONECO will implement the project in the districts of Lilongwe, Ntcheu, Zomba and the commercial city of Blantyre with support from Mobile Schools.