Brabant House, Portsmouth Road, Thames Ditton, Surrey KT7 0EY

Originating as a small support group at a local Catholic Church (Our Lady of Lourdes Thames Ditton), Street Child Africa was founded by Father Patrick Shanahan to provide funding support for two other organisations he'd set up in Accra, Ghana (CAS and Street Girls Aid). Today, it works with 12 local partner organisations in sub-Saharan Africa who (by providing education, street work, drop-in centres, residential centres, basic healthcare services, and family tracing, mediation and reintegration) seek to "engage and empower children in street situations who are often uncounted and unheard. These children are denied access to education, excluded from healthcare systems, subject to multiple forms of violence and overlooked by national development strategies. Street Child Africa understands that the daily injustices they face are violations of international human rights law: children in street situations are human beings and rights holders entitled to protection, provision of services and participation in matters affecting them."

Street Child Africa works to "secure funding for the continuous implementation of its partners' project activities; strengthen the capacity of its partner organisations; and raise awareness of the conditions facing children in street situations and the causes leading to these situations in the first place. It accomplishes these goals by fundraising, supporting staff training, project planning, and local and international advocacy work." (source: streetchildafrica.org.uk; VAD, 2005, p368; DANGO questionnaire)