My life with orphans, neglected children

The late, legendary South African singer, Lucky Dube, opines in one of his trendy songs that “blessed is the hand that giveth, than the one that taketh.”  Not everyone finds it fashionable to give, but for the Executive Director of Confident Children out of Conflict (CCC), Hellen Mursali Boro, giving has always been part of her endeavour. She has devoted much of her life to rescuing vulnerable children and nurturing them for a purpose. As she explains to The City Review in an excerpt from the interview, caring for orphans and neglected children should be a top priority for everyone. Here is the interview.

CR: Thank you for creating time to speak to The City Review. Kindly introduce yourself to us.

Hellen: My name is Hellen Murshali Boro, and I am the Executive Director of Confident Children out of Conflict (CCC)—an organisation that looks after orphans.

CR: Walk us through the journey of establishing this organisation. How did you conceive the idea?

Hellen: Well, this organisation was conceived in 2007 by a Ugandan Dutch lady, Cathy Groenendijik, who left for Uganda to start up a similar orphanage for children mainly from South Sudan.

Initially, the ex-director worked at her home in Hai Malakal, and when the number grew, she asked the church for help with space, which is why today we are occupying part of the church premises.

CCC was originally meant only for girls, touching issues surrounding young girls living on the streets, orphaned, unaccompanied, and those in dire need, but eventually, when statistics were carried out in the streets of Juba we realised that not only the girls but the boys were equally affected.

CR: How long have you been running this organization?

Hellen: I started working as the executive director of this organisation in 2017. Although I was a volunteer when the primary executive director left the board.

My background has enabled me to do social welfare for vulnerable groups, having worked with the Central Equatoria State Ministry of gender, children and social welfare for close to five years.

How many children are currently under your care and what are their conditions.

Hellen: Currently, we have 55 children, but 20 of them are under the age of 10 years. They are in a really critical time because they need a lot of care.

When we started this, all was well, but the 2013 war increased the number of unaccompanied children.  And, from that time till now, more cases have been coming in, we don’t have shelter for all these cases, but we have to accommodate all these children with the background of rape cases, GBV, forced marriages, and early marriages.

We also have kids with disabilities, and chronic medical cases that were abandoned because parents did not know what to do and how to take care. Such kids have to stay here and will grow into adults. We will need to discuss this with the government because we will need their guidance on what we should do with this group that will require special care.

CR: How do you shoulder the costs of running the orphanage by paying employees, buying food, medicine, and other necessary requirements?

Hellen: At the moment, we are trying to talk to the donors like the South Sudanese humanitarian fund who give us money to help the displaced kids in Mangala, POC1 and POC3, and with this funding, we use it to help the facility.

The national South Sudan NGO forum helps a lot in training us on how to manage the social issues within the communities, and we always thank the people who come from outside to work with us to provide services.

There are also good friends of the children who bring us food and non-food items, nappis, second-hand clothes and our good staff who are calm. When you see the children, you just have to take care of them because they are our children and South Sudanese children. “What the kids eat is what we eat.”

CR: Do you have an external source of funding, like from the government or other NGOs

Hellen: UNICEF used to support us, but now the funding has ended due to the presence of COVID-19 and has created a very big gap. And in the Ukraine war, most of the funding has been channelled to those areas which makes it terrible.

We are not getting assistance from the government and, in fact, some of the kids are brought here by the government because the facility they have always takes older children from 5 years of age and up, but we often get 10 newly born babies.

CR: What does it feel like to care for children with no parents, I can imagine you being the guardian and a shadow parent for that matter?

Hellen: An eye-opener, really. I don’t know if people realise the fragility of children of this nature because before coming here, perhaps we knew enough about orphans. If both your parents die, the extended family looks after you, but if they are unwilling, the government has to take care of you.

There are also children who are hyperactive and cannot stay still but are always creating trouble. You won’t realise this until you stay with them and see with your own eyes. It gives you a wider spectrum of what children are like in the real world.

We also deal with parents and probe them on what they think of the situation, and whether they need the child to be relocated to allow the issues to be resolved so that children can return to their families.

CR: How many children have you reunited so far, and what is the process of reunification?

Hellen: We have united quite a number of children, and they are not doing well because we have our standards here. So, after 3 years with your new family, it becomes difficult for the kid to catch up. If the family does not take good care of the child, especially in a situation where the child is out of school, most boys end up in bodaboda business and girls get married off.  

Family tracing and unification is one of the hardest things to do, but we engage the Red Cross, which has the capacity to cross borders. We try as much as possible to get the information updated regularly so that the child can be relocated when he or she grows up.

CR: Did you have any specific ideas in mind when adopting these children, and at what age?

Hellen: We have an adoption process, but we start with fostering to keep the child for years because we hope that one day the parent may appear. If after all these years, the child is still disputed, then you can start the adoption process at the ministry of gender, child and social welfare.

So far there is [only] one adopted because the adoption laws are strict both for foreigners and local people.

CR: Share with us a success story of a child who excelled under your care.

Hellen: Yes, there is one who is moving to nurse school. She was a child soldier whose parents are moving to northern Uganda.  She wanted to become a doctor and, for her own reasons, she decided to branch into nursing at Juba Teaching Hospital, where she is pursuing a diploma.

CR: Any final word to the South Sudanese or well-wishers out there?

Hellen: If there are people out there trying to sponsor a child. Let them do so. Also, if you have two children and have the ability to sponsor another one, please do that, even in government schools since they are cheap. If you can sponsor a child through senior four, you will have done a wonderful thing. Even if she gets married there, she can still do something in her marriage and life.