After school, there was studying, more chores, dinner and bed around 9 p. He was the youngest of his siblings and was separated from them by age and gender. Peter says leaving the orphanage was a hard transition for him in many facets of his life. His siblings also struggled through some incredibly challenging circumstances after leaving the orphanage.
They had no place to run because the relationships with other family members had not been developed. As a young adult, Peter worked for the same orphanage where he had once lived. He says he remembers the pain of not having a close-knit family and he was determined to make it a reality for other children.
To the outside observer, an orphanage is a place of refuge and safety to vulnerable children, like Peter, who have lost their parents. But in reality, the vast majority of the 8 million children living in orphanages worldwide still have living family members.
In Kenya, some social workers actively recruit children from families to come live in orphanages. Do you want children to get a guaranteed education? Peter says these children then had no interaction with their families for years. They lost touch. Speaking from experience, Peter says changes also need to be made for children who have lost both parents. Today, Peter is running Child in Family Focus, an organization that champions family-based care for children and pushes for government reform on policies relating to children and their care.
Torn away from their parents and caregivers, young children quickly develop bonds with volunteers and may feel abandoned when they leave. Without stringent background checks of volunteers and orphanage staff, children growing up in orphanages are also targets for sexual exploitation and abuse. You may also be violating several laws by volunteering in orphanages. In many countries, volunteering requires special visa and work permits. In Nepal, for example, it is illegal to volunteer on a tourist visa.
The family is a nurturing and caring environment and is the ideal place to raise a child. Caregivers come and go. So do peers. You are rarely alone, but there is often a distinct lack of closeness in the relationships you have.
Children living in orphanages tend to lead fairly structured lives. Due to the nature of an orphanage — many children, and fewer caregivers — life happens on a schedule. Children get up, get cleaned, eat, learn, and recreate in a regimented way. Specifically, these children sometimes have difficulty coping with free time and self-directed play, a lingering remnant of their days living such structured lives. Despite being surrounded by people at all hours of the day, orphanage life can be lonely.
Children who have spent time in an orphanage often learn to depend on no one but themselves. This may be in part because they feel let down by adults not uncommon in older children and in part because personal, family-like care is lacking. This self-dependency can mean they have a sense of independence, but it may also mean that establishing trust in new caregivers — or even new parents — is difficult.
I saw children who ran away and fell between the cracks, those who were shy and lived forgotten in the shadows, and those who could only get attention by playing up. I also met the parents of these so-called orphans. One poor, single mother had, out of desperation, placed five children in the orphanage. Providing her with financial support to raise them at home would have been the moral and financially prudent thing to do, rather than funding an orphanage.
Nearly three years into the job, allegations of sexual abuse were levelled against the director. He was later tried and convicted of the rape of a minor. Unfortunately, this scenario plays out in orphanages around the world with startling regularity.
After serving less than two years of a year sentence, the director won a retrial. He was released in January and his retrial is ongoing. The director remained free and continued to run the orphanage until charges were formally brought against him, but most of the donors moved on.
Those who remained suffered increasingly squalid conditions. Government officials all gave the same excuse for their inaction: they could not shut down the orphanage because they had nowhere to house the remaining children, not even temporarily.
For those of us who had spent years bonding with the children, it was impossible to look away. A group of former donors and I were desperate to somehow right a wrong in which we felt complicit.
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