Play For Hope

 I have never seen statistics of how effective sports can be in the lives of street children, that is until today.  Serieux, Rwanda's Play For Hope Director, sent me the information on the children that he has worked with since 2002.  With little if any funding or resources, Serieux has worked with 120 children.  Of those children, 18 have gone to vocational training school, 10 boys to the champion center, 12 boys were counseled to return to their home, be reconciled to their families, and receive a school sponsorship and I have helped them with a counseling and decide to go to reconcile with their families. Sixty five of the boys have completely stopped drug use.  That is to say 1/3 of the boys left the streets, even with almost no funding, and over half quit taking drugs.  Anyone who has worked with street kids, knows how amazing those numbers are. This is what Serieux has to say about the ministry:  "I have seen many lives of the boys changed in our sport activities just by giving them time to enjoy one another's talent.  When you teach them soccer skills, he finds himself doing something he never thought he could. It builds a confidence, value, and hope for the future that he can achieve something great in his life.  The word of God helps them to know the truth for their lives and thus stop the bad things and do the good things to benefit God's blessings in their lives."

I have been asked before, and perhaps with reason, why Play For Hope would use sports to serve persons in one of the poorest countries on earth.  After all children need clean water, they need food, and they need housing.  Many of the children that we work have none of these.  While I believe that the aforementioned statistics demonstrate how sports can help children receive these necessities, I think there is an even larger point to be made: such an assertion is in my opinion dehumanizing and misses the entire point of serving someone.  Street children have dreams, street children have talents many of which no one has ever cared to take the time and see.  I fully believe that we have become to accustomed to seeing pictures of poor African children with flies on them and disparagingly viewed saw them as somehow different from those of us in the Western world.  That is somehow they are persons who only care about survival, not as persons who can be just as thoughtful and just as beautiful as we (whomever we are) think ourselves to be.  This sentiment is completely wrong (please note this is not the sentiment of other organizations working in Rwanda, many of whom are supportive of our work as we are of theirs).  It is for that reason that we fully believe that to minister to a child, you must fully minister to a human being.  (I particularly like Africa New Life's slogan Let Every Child Dream).  I am not going to get into the technicalities of doing ministry with children who have been abandoned and have grown up addicted to drugs and in constant threat of arrest and bullying.  However, suffice it say these children are short on receiving love and finding anyone they can trust.  The primary commodity needed to house them, to feed them, to love them, is for them to have someone they can trust will always be there for them.  Sports is one way (not the only and not the best for all children) that this love and trust can be expressed.  As Serieux noted, these boys change, when they begin to see that they can accomplish great things and have a positive future.  I have seen a former Rwandan street kid perform music on a stage in front of tens of thousands, to short change them as only needing food and drink is doing a disservice to everyone.