HOW WE WORK

We are committed to bringing love and acceptance to vulnerable children living on the streets. Our team has witnessed the benefits of our love-based family reunification program.

Communities at large, as well as the parents of the street children we work with, are able to experience the joy of restoration when families come back together.

RESCUE

REHABILITATION

Our social workers and missionaries work hard to develop relationships with children and youth while they are still on the streets. It is important we gain their trust before rescuing them. We desire willing hearts to engage in our program.

Bible storying is used to gather groups together peacefully on street corners and in gang bases so we can begin to identify individual cases and plan groups to take to the centre on our next rescue.

From this early stage we begin to engage the community. We involve local village chiefs and community leaders.

If the child is willing to show us their family at this stage we begin a relationship with them too before rescuing their child to join our residential rehab program.

REINTEGRATION

We believe that children belong in and thrive in families.

At this stage of the process when children and families have reconciled through forgiveness and growth on both sides, we bring the children back home to their family.

But, our relationship does not end here. For years to come we follow up very closely on the whole family as a newly reunified unit. Discipleship and counselling continues, we join them at parent teacher meetings at school, we help them connect with local churches, we spend time loving them and encouraging them in their relationships with each other and with Jesus.

RESTORATION

The foundation for everything we do is to see restoration through the redemption that comes from Jesus. We are blessed to see families restored as well as hearts and lives restored through Christ.

This restoration does not come through provision of aid or material things but through healing. The kind of healing that is accessible through experiencing the love and truth of Christ and the love of those essential Christ ordained family relationships.

During the different stages of our program the children we rescue are introduced to who Jesus is. They are given a choice: Learn why and how they should trust in this Jesus or continue trusting in themselves.

All of our programs are underpinned by biblical truth. Children go deep with the Lord and learn how to live life as priests how tend the alter of the Lord through prayer and worship and as disciples of Christ who make his name known from their neighbourhoods to the nations.

We teach them about intercession, deliverance, the spiritual gifts available to us and that being a disciple is much more than a fast track ticket to eternal life. They learn about mission and why SHL is here to help them.

Many children that pass through our centre go back out to friends who are still on the street and witness to them, encouraging them that Jesus can bring restoration to their lives too.

As children are rescued they get brought to

'Lighthouse Rehabilitation Centre'.

At Lighthouse, we provide a safe, loving place to live, nutritious food, medical care and a specially designed recovery environment. Through biblical based counselling, love and forgiveness children are able to recover from emotional wounds and regain hope and self worth. They learn to let go of unhealthy habits used to cope through tough situations at home and on the streets.

As they process trauma, hurt and rejection they soon come to a place of shaking off their former identity as a street child and take on their new identity in Christ.

Throughout the process children become empowered, healthy individuals with a new found confidence in their worth and ability. They engage in special tuition that helps them catch up on years of missed school.

While the children go through our rehabilitation program, their families go through their own process of change at home. We empower parents, grandparents, older siblings and other kin with the tools they need to reconnect and restore their relationships. Families learn how to offer their children physical, spiritual and emotional support at home.

Our social workers provide a shoulder to lean on for parents as they come to terms with what their children have been through on the streets. Most parents have traumas from their own childhoods that need to be processed. We continually assess the home to make sure it is safe and to see if the parents could benefit from financial literacy training, nutritional guidance or business start up support.

All of this is done in preparation for the child's journey home.

BE PART OF REUNITING STREET CHILDREN WITH THEIR FAMILIES

We are just getting started. Many children have successfully made it home and many families are living restored. But there are hundreds of thousands more.

You can help in four simple ways:

ADVOCATE

Spread the word that children belong in families. Raise awareness in your local church or school. Help champion our cause on social media.

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DONATE FINANCES

Whether you fundraise for a one time project, give to our work every month or support our missionaries to serve this ministry on the field, your finances are seeds.

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BECOME A PRAYER PARTNER

Sign up to receive our prayer letter each month via email and begin by holding us in prayer. You can pray alone, with your own family or set up a small group that meets to pray once a month for our work and those we work.

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VISIT US

Whether you come serve on a short term mission trip, come out to visit our missionaries to support them as they serve, intern with us for a semester or move to Kenya to serve as a full time missionary, we want you to experience our ministry.

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