Finding a Safe Space

I'm back in Durban in the tropical rain. I've been coming to this city for well over a decade and its a place I regard as a second home. Street Action's partnerships are baed on relationships and trust. They reflect the connections and mutual understanding built up over many years. As part of this blog, we want to use it to give readers, supporters and those interested in our work the opportunity to engage with our partners visually through pictures, films as well as written word. I was last with Umthombo Street Children in February 2009. Safe Space had just opened its doors and was beginning to be used by the children living on the streets. A year on there has been huge developments and Safe Space is now a fully operating rehabilitation and therapeutic centre for street children in the Point area of the city. Umthombo runs programmes including surfing, football and the arts. The programmes they are developing are an alternative and compassionate strategies that empower children to leave the streets for a better life. Today I spent some time meeting with the Umthombo team, including the new social workers and learned about how Safe Space is working with the many children who use the centre on a daily basis. I took a couple of films as I arrived and met with Sipho, a former street child who heads up Umthombo's advocacy work. On Monday we will go into Safe Space and show you some of the work that is being done.

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About

Joe is co-founder and director of Street Action
( www.streetaction.org ). Street Action was established in 2007 in the UK to support and work in partnership with pioneering street children organisations in Africa.

Joe has worked alongside street children activists since 1996 when he first traveled to South Africa. Since then he has worked with a number of pioneering street children projects and activists in South Africa as well as traveling to other Southern and Eastern African countries. Studying a degree in Politics and obtaining a Masters in Development Studies and African Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), he has worked in the field of international development and also local community development in the UK. In 2010 he was made a research associate at the The University of London's Centre of African Studies, based at SOAS.

His work has taken him to a number of countries in Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as India and recently the US to San Francisco where he has been involved in setting up Street Action USA.

Joe currently lives in London, United Kingdom.