Beggars: donation advice

Following an article about the increasing number of beggars in Ballito, a number of inquiries as to which charities the community could donate to if they wanted to help, poured in.

North Coast Courier Orphan Fund secretary, Rose Stephenson said street children were a relatively new phenomenon in Ballito that seemed to have come with the town’s development.

Stephenson said perhaps this was a good opportunity to challenge local churches and those who care to set up organisations for street children and give them a future.

Umhlali SAPS’s Lt Col Dieter Fittkau said it was unwise to give money to beggars because it encouraged them to stay on the streets.

“Rather give to an organisation that prevents people from becoming beggars. There are many social upliftment programmes that improve underprivileged schools, give street children an alternative to begging, and sport clubs that aim to keep disadvantaged kids off the streets and add value to their lives,” said Fittkau.

I Care is a Durban based non profit Christian organisation that offers meaningful and sustainable solutions for street children. They achieve this through awareness programmes, rehabilitation, shelters, skills development and job creation to produce effective members of society.

The organisation has offices in Durban and Johannesburg and the Durban branch takes kids in from all over KZN, including the Dolphin Coast.

On their website, I Care said street children make about R70 per day or up to R300 over weekends from begging.

They said only a small amount of the money is spent on food and the rest is either stolen by older children or used to buy drugs and alcohol, which in turn leads to drug addiction, crime, prostitution and gang involvement.

Umthombo Street Children is another good option. Umthombo is also a Durban based non profit organisation that gets street children involved in surfing while providing psychosocial services to empower them.

Tom Hewitt started a programme with Durban street children in 1998 called The Durban Street Team. In 2004 this became a bigger organisation called Umthombo Street Children.

I Care can be contacted on 031-5726870 (for information) and 086 147 0047 to get involved. Visit their website: www.icare.co.za

Umthombo Street Children’s website is www.tomhewitt.org and they can be contacted via email at tom@tomhewitt.org.