A story of inspiration from Angola

Meet the woman who makes Angola’s abandoned kids look forward to a better future.

The first time I met her she amazed me with her drive , passion and level of involvement with these kids, a level of involvement that goes beyond volunteering some of your personal time, and becomes part of your daily life.

I did not understand how she had all this strength in her to deal with daily troubles and heartbreaking issues of street children in Angola.

Estelle Dogbe has been working with international development and humanitarian projects for over 15 years mostly in Africa. Since high school she knew that this is what she wanted to do. Wanting to discover the world at a young age, she started off in Togo back in 1997 where she went to plant trees in a village.

She has been all over Africa! After Togo, she then went on to work with "Medecins sans Frontieres" in Liberia and Sierra Leone. She also worked in Sudan with the French embassy and worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Project as well as setting up a local NGO in Nigeria with a friend of hers and former colleagues of her which till this date is still running strong.

Then life brought her to Angola where she worked with Samusocial  International in Luanda working with shelters and orphanages around the country. Estelle tells me that there is one main shelter that fosters street kids in Luanda. There are around 10 to 15 other remaining orphanages or shelters that take in kids that their own families are not being able to take care of.

The main difficulty that these orphanages are facing is the lack of funding and support from the government and the lack of professional human resources trained in social work.

However some organizations , like FOLSCO which stands for Friends of Luanda Street Children and that is run by volunteering expats volunteering  the shelters by providing constant and regular support/donations and constant visits to have in depth knowledge of the needs of the shelters. They also organize weekly breakfast gatherings for the street children where they offer them something to eat and play with them for a couple of hours while discussing with them whether they would like to be integrated into a shelter or not. FOLSCO members have helped several kids to  leave the  streets and take refuge in one of Luanda's shelters.

Estelle tells me also that the Angolan run organization the Fundacao Arte & Cultura helps the shelters with artistic activities and music which is also very important for the children, to gain confidence and express themselves.

The first thing that pushed me into knowing more about Estelle and trying to get involved a bit with what she does was her passion and determination. She has worked on different types of aid projects from prevention of AIDs and malaria, education and health, but the thing that struck her the most was the first time she went into the streets at night 3 years ago.

As part of her work with Samusocial at that time was going at night in an ambulance to check on the street kids that are hurt or injured and providing aid for them and giving them a choice of whether they want to be integrated in a shelter or not.

Estelle tells me that the sight of children  “completely destroyed” by drugs and left to roam the streets alone made it impossible for her to dismiss it or take it lightly. She knew then that she has to keep on giving her time, energy and passion for these abandoned kids. She used to wake up at night thinking and trying to figure out what more she can do to support them.

And obviously she figured it out!

Estelle is currently working on an exciting and long awaited project.  She is in the process of opening an emergency shelter for street children in Luanda that will include medical and psychological care. She tells me that she has met some incredible people that believed in her and her project that are helping to fund the shelter’s construction and so on. She hopes that her shelter will be ready to receive kids by June of 2018. With the construction currently ongoing , she is also working on getting a professional team of social workers.

She does not want to share or recall the bad and disturbing experiences the kids she meets pass through. Only the positive ones .

Citing Estelle’s words “All those children that I have met are special to me and I have shared so many moments of joy with them.”   She tells me about the art exhibition they organized with children at the memorial Agostinho Neto. The kids were trained by an Angolan artist for 2 months and then their paintings were showcased during 2 weeks at the memorial of Agostinho Neto in Luanda.

When they brought them at the opening of the art show  “you could see stars in their eyes and smiles all the way to their ears… it was so beautiful to see! The other one is when I organized together with Samusocial and Dom Bosco the new year party at the beach for 250 street children. It was amazing to see all those children suffering everyday violence to become kids again! “

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