For more than 30 years MYC has provided accommodation, support, care and education for marginalized and homeless young people at risk through poverty.

Father Larry McDonnell, a Salesian priest, was and still is the leading inspiration behind this project and today MYC runs six residential homes for over a hundred and twenty boys.

In 2000 Father McDonnell’s outreach work identified a very concerning situation where a growing number of young people and children were living totally on the streets, some for as long as 2-3 years.

The research showed that the boys were:

Begging for food and money
Foraging in dustbins
Buying cheap solvents to alleviate hunger
Turning to stealing
The target of predatory abusive males
At great risk of infection from STD’s and HIV/AIDS
At risk of becoming criminalized

Why were these boys on the streets?
Many were AIDS orphans
Increasing numbers of grandmothers caring for too many children
Extended families no longer able to bear financial burden
Some were runaways from abusive carers
Breakdown of family structure/step-parent families
Extreme poverty compounded by years of drought in some rural areas.

Many needed to be re-socialised in the ways of Swazi society and also
some needed to be weaned off abusive substances, so as to be
re-integrated into a school situation.

In 2002 the first step was taken to try and create a more informal
structure where the idea of learning life skills was presented as
non-threatening and could occasionally be FUN. For some months
this took place on some waste ground outside the town where a
group of boys stayed at night; gradually a trust began to grow and
eventually the boys began to make their way to some very modest
MYC premises in Manzini which eventually came to be known as
‘Little School’; it proved to be a very necessary transition period for
the boys who grew in confidence. Since then many have moved
into mainstream schooling.

Coca Cola provided the funding to build a new ‘Little School’ called
“Sandrini” which is central to this charity’s goals. Swazis, most of
whom are untrained but willing and committed, staff the school.
They work for little money. One of the most enthusiastic, Mduduzi,
a young man ‘raised ‘by MYC has been active in the school now for
over two years, and wishes to be trained as a schoolteacher. It is
wonderful to be able to make this possible.

Education is the key to unlock poverty