Associação Wona Sanana

43% of all young children in Mozambique suffer from acute malnutrition in their early years. This has led to high levels of infant mortality with nearly 1 in 12 children in Mozambique not surviving beyond their fifth birthday.

In southern Mozambique, near the border with Swaziland, Egmont Partner Associação Wona Sanana are working with 300 families who are caring for HIV+, disabled and AIDS-affected children. These children are given regular health check-ups to ensure that they stay healthy, whilst the caregivers are trained in how to provide them with the best care possible. The caregivers are also supported with a variety of economic interventions such as business training, agricultural training, and the provision of a range of agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilisers.

Masana

Those children, orphaned in Mozambique either through conflict or through the HIV epidemic, without families to support them often face a life on the streets, mostly in the capital city of Mozambique, Maputo. Although there are charities working with these children to reintegrate them into their families, many of them are unable to readjust to their new way of life after years on the streets and leave their families once again. Egmont Partner Masana are working with young boys living on the streets of Maputo to support them before and after reintegration to ensure that they do not end up on the streets once again.

Masana have constructed a “halfway house” on the outskirts of the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. Masana’s case workers go out into the street communities of Maputo to identify young boys that could successfully reintegrate into their families. Once identified, they are invited to live at the halfway house where they are taught basic skills to ensure that they can re-enter society. They are also able to receive educational and medical support whilst they stay at the centre. After a period of a few months, the boys are reintegrated with their families and aftercare support will ensure that they do not return to the streets. Masana are aiming to reintegrating 30 boys into family homes over the next two years, as well providing services for 60 boys living on the street at their day centre.

Meninos de Moçambique

There are an estimated 1,100,000 children orphaned as a result of AIDS in Mozambique. Many have no choice but try to survive on their own and head to Maputo, the capital, to live on the streets. Often without any formal schooling, they are forced to turn to stealing or transactional sex - putting them at high risk of HIV infection.

Meninos works to rehabilitate Maputo's street children to reintegrate them with their families and tries to reach vulnerable children before they end up on the streets. Staff build trusting relationships with the children and, when the children are ready, seek to reunite them with their families. Meninos also assists families with nutritional support, school fees and materials as well as providing vocational training for the older children.

Youth Association for Community Development (YACD)

Mozambique has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world. Eighteen percent of girls have their first child between the age of 15-19, nearly double the 9.4% average in East and Southern Africa and at least 10% have a child before the age of 15. Sexual and gender-based violence is widespread. Poverty, harmful cultural norms and a lack of access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information and services contribute to this.

Egmont Partner Youth Association for Community Development (YACD) is working to address these issues in the Beira, Dondo and Buzi districts of Sofala Province in central Mozambique by increasing SRH knowledge and access to services for young people.

In their Egmont-supported project, YACD are conducting awareness-raising sessions at health units and busy community spots, such as local markets, to reach 11,000 girls and young people with information on SRH, human rights and child marriage law, through theatre and traditional dance. Alongside this, 675 young people will be reached through 45 youth clubs, where they can discuss and learn about these issues. To enable change at every level, YACD are also bringing together groups of local community and religious leaders in 30 neighbourhoods where these issues will be addressed and leaders encouraged to replicate the discussions within their communities. Community health corners and mobile tents are also being used to bring voluntary testing and counselling services directly into these neighbourhoods.