SONNE CHILD AND YOUTH SUPPORT CENTER

After one year of building and some more time of planning and thinking about it, we could finally open our new CHILD AND YOUTH SUPPORT CENTER.

This center will improve the perspectives of vulnerable children and youth in Myanmar, in terms of education, critical and creative ways of thinking (and more self-esteem and knowledge about personal rights) and overall a more secured future with a safe livelihood and a promising life in dignity. Furthermore this project intends to strengthen the families and benefit the whole community.

A new support centre for Yangon’s marginalized children

In and around Yangon, many children and youth endure lives on the street in the most precarious of conditions. Since 2015, SONNE Social Organization is operating three day-care centres (DCCs) for these destitute young people, which provide non-formal education, daycare, nutrition, training services, bathing facilities, and medical care to 40 – 50 children per centre. Children are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and other school subjects, added up by a sports- and arts program. Children who still have a chance to be integrated into formal schools are supported with documents, enrolment, materials, and free tuition classes.

Within the last years, we experienced that rental agreements of apartments for the centres are not guaranteeing sustainability. Short term contracts include the risk of being forced to change place; house owner rules are limiting certain activities with the children. Therefore we decided to construct our first own “SSO centre”.

The centre provides space for a broad program, including non-formal education, formal education support (tuition classes), vocational training, sports-& arts classes, cultivation training, and computer classes. Around 150 children, youth, and family members will participate in one of the activities in the centre daily. This project provides vulnerable and marginalized children and youth the chance to individually develop in a child-friendly and secure environment where they are cared for, can gain knowledge, skills, and creativity in order to get an accepted member of the society and increased chances for a secure and promising future.

The centre is divided into two buildings, each has two floors. On the main building’s ground floor the daycare centre for non-formal education students is located; on the first floor the training centre for vulnerable youth. The annex includes kitchen, indoor sports, and community hall (ground floor) and a tuition classroom for marginalized formal school children and computer classes. A sports field and a small garden are located next to the centre.

This project will be co-financed by multiple donors to establish a sustainable centre, offering a holistic program, and strengthening collaborations.

The construction of the building was completed in October 2019. After a kind of break due to COVID-19 we are ready to start again and maintain this unique support program. Therefore we need your help. If you wanna support children with an educational sponsorship, please sign up here: https://www.sonne-international.org/myanmars-strassenkinder-retten/#section-a

children will participate in the non-formal education and daycare program- daily

school children will participate in the tuition classes and receive support- daily

adolescents will finish a vocational training and prepared for a secure job- per year

children and youth will receive computer training – a year

families of this area will receive awareness trainings and health care access- per year