The two founders, Justina Conteh (in Sierra Leone) and Philip Dean (in England) had a very simple policy, out of which every objective grew: ‘Treat every child and react to every situation as if these children were actually our own real children’.

1 Alleviate physical hunger and ensure the children are fit and healthy.
2 Ensure that any medical conditions are attended to.
3 Make the children feel safe, free from stress and able to relax in the knowledge that people do care about them.
4 To ensure the physical safety of the children and provide shelter and accommodation in a caring environment, either in our own centre or in foster care depending on which is most suitable and available.
5 To build each child's self esteem and self confidence, teaching the children to tolerate and respect those around them.
6 To provide education and where ever possible to return the children to main stream education.
7 To ensure that the children have the opportunity to follow a faith
8 Develop a good profile for the project within the community so that to be known as a St George's child will work for them in a positive manner. Remove all stigma of being a street child so that this is not carried with the children in later life.
9 In all possible cases the children should be returned to their families through a reunification project.
10 Be prepared to support the children into young adulthood and assist them in finding careers and creating their own futures.

1 Alleviate physical hunger and ensure the children are fit and healthy.
This process was started with our feeding programme which entailed having the children attend our meeting place where they were given a main meal at lunch time and a lighter meal in the evening before they were taken back by bus to the city centre where they spent their nights.
Once we moved them into the home we were feeding them seven days a week and three meals a day and all the children increased in weight and their physical conditions improved immensely. We have a great and very dedicated cook, Aunty Marie and she has made meals a real treat right from day one.
Once we traced families and reunited children with their relatives food has again become an issue. We simply have to reunify children with their real families to enable us to help others and for them to finally reintegrate with society. But, the conditions for some of those children are very tough, food is not always plentiful, and we have to keep a careful eye on the children. Partly because of this, we are now inviting them back over the school holidays and we can make sure that they are properly nourished.
2 Ensure that any medical conditions are attended to.
Many of the children had medical conditions that had been left untreated for some time. The general health of the children was poor and in the first couple of weeks 10 out of just 45 children needed to visit a hospital and we made arrangements with a local visiting nurse to attend our children on a daily basis.
The onset of our first rainy season was a real cause for concern as the children were soaking wet for much of the time. This is when mosquitoes thrive and malaria and many water borne diseases are also at their peak. There was real pressure for securing housing for the children that was dry and healthy.
In September 2004 (4 months into the programme) we had our first week with no child ill.
Considering their lifestyles, HIV seems to have passed most of our girls by, sadly not all. However in 2005 the World Bank started funding a programme that has given access to proper HIV health care. We are keeping a very close eye on this situation and will do everything we can to support affected children.
Very sadly, we have lost one of our children on November 13th 2005, a lovely young woman of 14, Balu who suffered from a hereditary disease, sickle cell anaemia. Having had a real scare the Christmas before with an emergency appendix we had a plan that was immediately put into action and she was rushed to a very good hospital, where they were unable to save her. Even in the UK, people die from this from time to time and we just have to be happy that she knew that she was loved and surrounded by friends at the end.

3 Make the children feel safe, free from stress and able to relax in the knowledge that people do care about them.
At the very start the children almost instantly bonded with those caring for them and our second week started with touching gifts of fruit from the children who had had their own whip round (presumably a few extra pockets got picked that weekend, but it’s the thought that counts). Their hunger for love and affection and adult care in their lives seemed as strong a pull as their physical hunger.
The original feeding programme was designed as a three part session with meals at either end, and activities and counselling in between. This was given by our volunteers (social worker, Mr John Dalton and our Baptist Minister Pastor David Kaneky under the devoted guidance of the project coordinator, Justina Conteh). The idea was to control their activities and protect them for part of the day so that for at least a few hours they could actually let their guard down, relax, enjoy normal behaviour and unwind a bit.
It was quite a shock to Justina to find herself at 24 years old with all these children looking to her as their substitute mother and to realise that they really had nobody else to turn to.
4 To ensure the physical safety of the children and provide shelter and accommodation in a caring environment, either in our own centre or in foster care depending on which is most suitable and available.
Between the time when the programme was being considered and its actual commencement we identified 43 children, took their photos and got some background stories from them as to how they had ended up living as they had. The weekend before we started the programme we then went back onto the streets to tell the children to come on the following Monday (3rd May 2004) which was about three weeks from the time we had taken the photos. Several children were missing and for some this was good news as another organisation had actually had the same thoughts as us and taken some of them in. However for twelve boys the reason was not good at all, as one night a lorry had turned up in the area where the children sleep and simply taken a lorry load away to start work in the diamond fields, effectively to become slave labour.
This was quite a shock and brought home the question of security as a matter of urgency. Clearly we could not seek support for individual children if we could not guarantee their safety, and some of the boys taken had already had terrible experiences as forced workers for the rebels and we really were on the brink of possibly turning their lives around. As a result the project was immediately upgraded from a feeding programme to consider housing as an essential part of any long term activities.
Once we had the house it all changed and we worked hard to cultivate a real feeling of belonging, to bond the children as a family and make them see it as their home. This was very successful and the children actually refer to each other as their brothers and sisters and the staff as aunties, and it really does feel like a huge family and the children see it as their real home now.

5 To build each child's self esteem and self confidence, teaching the children to tolerate and respect those around them. Preparing them for adulthood through life skills, team work, sports, community activities and learning self discipline.
Building up self esteem, self confidence and self discipline has been one of the most important things that we have done for the children, and to do that we had to get the children to trust us and we have to stick to our word. Respect and trust is a two way relationship but the children have responded more than we could ever have imagined.
These children literally had to learn to fight to survive and having had no adult supervision for perhaps half their lives in some cases many had become almost feral. Many were not even house trained and we had to start training them out of some 'pretty disgusting habits' as Justina put it. They had learned nothing but rejection and indifference and physical and sexual abuse from most of the adults they came into contact with since they lost contact with their own families. Many were traumatised and the girls most of all were extremely hesitant to come forward for help, which resulted in us having far more boys than girls in our first year.
We definitely needed to have these children under our care twenty four hours a day to break them out of their street life mind sets, and unlike many projects for street children we do not allow them to wander on and off the programme as they please. We try to fill nearly every hour of their day with rewarding and fulfilling activities designed to bond them, give them a sense of achievement and self worth and keep their minds occupied.
Among some of the activities:
Dancing has been great fun and a real discipline to learn and we have a Traditional and Gospel dance group. We do no end of little plays that the children often write themselves and we also created our own choir and musical group as no matter what their academic levels all the children can learn to sing and perform and they love doing it. We had hoped to perform locally for the benefit of the children's self esteem and to publicise the name of the St George Foundation. We actually formed a brilliant dance group and were nearly ready to give River Dance a run for their money, but much to my frustration we reunified most of the children just as they were ready to go professional and we never even got them on video!

However, there are also lots of team sports and games which are not only great for the body but the mind too. The boys are obsessed with football, and we have enough children for several teams. Board games are very popular, Scrabble is never put away and volley ball is a huge hit too. I have to say though that the neighbours no longer see the funny side of the phrase ‘can I have my ball back please’ and football in the garden in now banned.

It’s not all fun though and we also have them doing their own laundry and chores around the house and the house is always immaculate. This is to teach them about taking responsibility, working as a unit and to prepare them for adulthood.
6 To provide education and where ever possible to return the children to main stream education.
This turned out to be one of our greatest successes, and a hugely settling influence. At the very early stage sending these children to school was simply not realistic. Their behaviour just wouldn't be tolerated in a school and so we hired teachers and educated them ourselves at first to get them back into a state where they could concentrate and try and get them back into main stream education as soon as realistically possible.
Nearly every child has gone back to school and the remaining handful has gone onto some type of occupational training. Once in school we continued to coach them to ensure that they reach their maximum potential and they have done fantastically well with some children at the top of their classes and even being made prefects. We never stop encouraging them with their education.
For our latest recruits, we have returned some of them to school after just a month of getting them off the streets. Along with self control, education is vital and it’s one thing that will really empower the children in later life and to give them real independence. Having experienced life on the street they are highly switched on and desperate to improve themselves.
7 To ensure that the children have the opportunity to follow a faith and to introduce them into the Christian community. We don’t automatically exclude Muslim children from our worship, but they are totally free to practice their faith and we don’t try to convert.
After eleven years of civil war faith plays a much greater role in society than in the UK. A practicing faith in God can genuinely help the children turn their lives around, and all the children are brought up within a Christian environment.
All our staff and founders are Christians and by sharing our faith with the children and providing good role models we hope to lead the children to their own faith.
That said, we are keen not to push the children into anything, but to let them make their own minds up. It does appear however that the vast majority of the children have in fact grown in confidence and developed real relationships with God that I am convinced has helped them significantly through their experiences.
Some of the children in our care are from Muslim backgrounds and they are free to (and do) visit the local mosque whenever they wish. We are very proud of those children and they have our full support.
8 Develop a good profile for the project within the community so that to be known as a St George's child will work for them in a positive manner. Remove all stigma of being a street child so that this is not carried with the children in later life.
From day one we start the children in a new life and try to erase any memory and stigma attached to life on the streets. Through social interaction with the wider community we intend to bolster the name of the St George Foundation and when the children come to seek employment in later life, being considered as a St George's child will be a positive attribute.
9 In all possible cases the children should be returned to their families through a reunification project.
Working from information that the children gave us we have been able to locate relatives for about 90% of the children. With help from UNISEF and GAOL (an Irish charity) we have reunified nearly 60 children with their relatives in 2005, and replaced them with new children off the streets. This is when the children are most vulnerable to returning to the streets as adjusting to family life can be a very unpleasant shock. We visit the children twice a week (initially) after reunification at school and home to ensure they settle and so far not one reunification has failed because of the child. We have however taken two boys back due to lack of care.

Preparing the children for life at home and being able to keep in constant contact when they first go home is very important. In 2006 we hope to buy a couple of motorbikes to make sure that we can get to the ones in out of the way places on a regular basis.
There is a real danger of the children going backwards once they leave us, and we have decided to allow all the children to reunite with their St George family every school holiday. We have been very careful to make sure that the children understand that we have not forgotten them once they leave us and by having regular return opportunities it’s never too long before they are all back together again. We have not had a single reunification fail, which is very rare.
10 Be prepared to support the children into young adulthood and assist them in finding careers and creating their own futures.
We acknowledge that these children will soon be young adults and support should be extended right into their first years of independence as it would be in any normal family situation.
We are starting to guide them to real careers and hope to see them in professional jobs. We have in fact been in touch with the British Army and with the huge variety of career paths available we are planning to give possible recruits every support and encouragement.


Written by Philip Dean