Khayalethu Youth Centre is a small children’s home for former street boys run by the ACVV. We strive to alleviate the street children problem with our intensive and thorough individual approach to each child and his family.

Due to a lack of space we can only accommodate 24 boys at the Khayalethu Youth Centre and 6 boys in the Khayalethu-Oliver House. Dr. Marietjie van der Merwe heads up a team of nine staff members. An administrator, a driver, two house mothers, three child care workers, an auxiliary worker to follow up on parents and a street worker from ACVV that spends time on the streets and assesses who children will fit into the centre.

When a boy comes to the Khayalethu Youth Centre, we usually do not know who his parents are. Child court proceedings are started, he is enrolled in a local school and we start from scratch in teaching him basic life skills.


Street Children’s main motivation to be on the streets are either to generate income for their families or to escape unbearable home circumstances. 78% of the children in the Eastern Cape live in poverty, and many children from the rural areas end up in the streets of Port Elizabeth.

Street Children lead essentially ‘adult lives’ and lack life skills despite their abundance of survival skills. Physical, sexual and substance abuse are rife amongst them. Most street children use drugs and alcohol, with thinners and glue being the most prevalent. This is aggravated by low levels of education and high prevalence of physical and cognitive disabilities.