Laughter Africa

Laughter Africa has been operating in Sierra Leone for seven and a half years and in that time have helped around 4,000 street children. We're not here to just provide handouts, we support the children to fulfil their aspirations and bring about positive change in their lives.  How do we do this? We start with our Outreach program, where our local Social Workers meet the children living on the streets. It's a chance for them to get to know us and for us to deal with any immediate needs they have such as medical treatment, food, water and to provide counselling. Our aim is to encourage children to leave the streets behind, but without forcing them; it has to be their choice. When a child decides they want to leave the streets, they stay at our Interim Care Centre (ICC) whilst our Social Workers track down their family and ensure it is a safe environment for the child to return to. We provide counselling to the family and child, in the hope that the original issues that led to them turning to the streets are resolved. Once the child has returned to their family, we continue to check-in on them and pay for their schooling or vocational training. We also offer other support such as medical treatment, home essentials, support to start a business, whatever is needed to keep the child at home and off the streets. We also advocate and campaign on behalf of street children. For instance, since October 2021 our advocacy work has focused on our sexual violence survivor support workshops which took place in eight communities as well as launching the survivor support hotline. Over the last year we reached 4000 street children and 238 community stakeholders. We also trained and appointed 15 community advocates who live in their community, offering the street children a safe space to go to immediately after they have been sexually assaulted.