by Innocent Kisanga

A Netherlands-based organization for street children and orphans, "Clown Bijouxxx Foundation" last week accomplished its training programme for street children rehabilitation involving also social workers in orphanages.

The last leg of the course was held at the Tanzania Centre for Community Alliance (TACODA), after conducting similar training at various centres in Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions.

The training aimed at offering knowledge and skills to the social workers making them aware of psychological problems of the children.

Clown Bijouxxx, the Managing Director of the foundation told this paper that such training was also being facilitated by experts from Belgium, Denmark and USA.

She said her foundation decided to organize the training tour after learning that Tanzania was among sub-Saharan countries much affected by the AIDS pandemic that left a lot of homeless children in the care of rehabilitation centres.

Apart from social workers, such training was also offered to attendants of children wards in hospitals including Mount Meru in Arusha and KCMC and Mawenzi in Kilimanjaro region.

Gema Tarimo, TACODA’s co-director who was among the trainees, said many workers benefitted from the psychological training as most of them learned new technics that they were not aware of.

The visiting group provided training to orphanages and rehabilitation centres of Nkoaranga, Rafiki Trust, TunaHaki light in Africa, Mkombozi centre, Amani children centre in Moshi and Engare Matenyok, Camp Moses, Patandi and TACODA in Arusha