Rescue

Rescue is one of the priority issues in our work. Witch-stigmatized and abandoned children live in constant dangers at home or their communities and on the streets. Their existence is characterized by rejections, hostilities from members of the community who see them as authors or harbingers of misfortunes, ill-luck, and death in society.

Moreover, such a set of children become easy targets and victims of violent crimes common in Nigerian society. Kidnapping, human trafficking, and ritual-killings where people ignorantly kill for body parts to be used for money and religious rituals are among the violent crimes daily reported by the mass media.

Tragically enough, any child living on the streets are oftentimes mistaken to be witches by community-members irrespective of any other cause that might have triggered their homelessness, especially in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Being children, they cannot defend themselves. They are subjected to all forms of cruelties, indignities, and abuses, including beatings, tying them to stakes without food, pouring boiling substances on them, poisoning, torture, and death.

Such children are identified and rescued by our rescue team working in collaboration with community volunteers and other public-minded individuals. And oftentimes we enlist the assistance of security personnel in order to ward off hostilities against us especially in risk-prone environments.

Situational analyses always weigh on the decision taken by our skilled rescue team at any point an abandoned child is about to be rescued. A child in a highly risky environment and whose life or health faces imminent danger is rescued with instant speed. There are also children we take to their homes and reunite with their families after providing counseling to them – the child and parents or guardian.