House of Mercy Children's Home

Since 2006, House of Mercy Children’s Home (HOM) has given hope, strength and joy to the less fortunate children of Nigeria through outreach to homeless street children and child scavengers, mobile kitchen for homeless street children as well as cloth distribution, health care and mobile school for child street beggars. Here is what we do in a nutshell…

HOM’s Child Street Beggar Programme which commenced in 2007 involves providing access to education for child street beggars and targets child street beggars including children of beggars and disabled persons at the Destitute Camp in Lagos.

The programme has two main objectives, the first of which is to raise public awareness of child street beggars and campaign against the situation where children are prematurely uprooted from school to beg on the streets and the second to provide informal education for about 200 child street beggars from Monday to Wednesday from 9am to 1pm. Through the informal classes organised by HOM, the children are prepared and encouraged to enrol in the regular government educational system.

The 19 children sponsored by HOM to local schools during the academic session 2010-2011 made significant progress and are quite enthusiastic about learning. During the academic session 2011-2012, HOM is sponsoring 20 additional children whose families cannot afford to send them to school. During the month of January 2012, we sponsored 10 more children.

We encourage equal educational opportunities and fifty-five percent of the students are girls. All the children work extremely hard and have dreams for a brighter future. HOM aims at ensuring their continued attendance and good performance in school.

Today, children who were formerly perceived as beggars are students and enjoy being children again. Most of the children who attend school describe it as a fulfilling experience and they hope to continue their education and one day escape the poverty they have always known.

During the month of March 2011, HOM rescued 12 boys from the perils of life on the streets. In April and May 2011, HOM rescued 15 more children, aged between 7 and 15 years, from a life on the streets. While some of the children have been reconciled with their families, those who are not able to return to their families, for obvious reasons, remain in our care.

HOM is committed to reducing the number of children living on the streets in Nigeria by providing a nurturing place for homeless children to heal, grow, and learn. Furthermore HOM aims to reunite the children with their families if they are not in danger of abuse or neglect.

Street children rehabilitation is an inherently complicated process. The challenge is to find new ways of preventing the next generation of street children whilst addressing the issues facing current street children in such a way that they do not become the street adults, “area boys” and perpetrators of abuse of tomorrow.