No blackboard. No desks. No books. Just love.
Poverty is ruthlessly efficient at wasting youth, often crushing its spirit at the point of need. Networks working with children at risk in Africa aim to change that. 
Kibera (Photo: © Isobel Booth-Clibborn) “Youth is wasted on the young,” said George Bernard Shaw. However, poverty often gets in first, laying youth waste before the young have a chance to experience it at its best.
Sarah is seven years old and lives on the edge of Nairobi, in what is widely regarded as Africa’s largest "informal urban settlement": Kibera.
It is home to more than a million people but has very few services or schools, hardly any medical provision, and you have to pay for the water mainly obtained from a few stand-pipes.
A young girl in Kibera(Photo: © Isobel Booth-Clibborn)Sarah lives with her mother, two brothers and three sisters in a 10-foot square single room.
Her mother tries to make a living by selling some vegetables but doesn’t make enough to feed the family. She certainly has no money to pay for them to attend school.
While many enjoy the benefits of living in a city as cosmopolitan and international as the Kenyan capital, the reality for the majority is quite different. Around 70 per cent of Nairobi's population — close to 2 million people — lives in settlements like Kibera.
These areas are characterised by small homes built from corrugated-iron sheets, a maze of rubbish-strewn footpaths edged by small market stalls and bars, and the buzz of congested daily life.
As with nearly all aspects of poverty, in these settlements or 'slums', as they are sometimes colloquially known, it’s the children who suffer most.
Many, like Sarah and her siblings, live in inadequate housing with poor sanitation and difficult access to water, have insufficient food to eat, and are unable to go to school.
The impact of these conditions is evident in the mortality rate of under-fives – 151 deaths per 1000, compared to the national average of 113 and to that of 61 for Nairobi as a whole.
Families and communities in the settlements are under great strain: unemployment is high, income is very low and alcohol abuse is widespread. The result is that many children are abandoned, abused or neglected.
Many have suffered the loss of one or both parents – 1 in every 10 children in Kenya has lost a parent, often to HIV/AIDS or malaria, or simply being unable to get medical help for readily curable diseases or injuries.
However, the settlements also host many small projects, set up by Christian churches, individuals and agencies, which are trying to meet these children’s needs. Many such projects focus on education but with very few resources. There are no government schools in these areas.
Pastor Wellington and his family in Kibera(Photo: © Isobel Booth-Clibborn)Wellington is a pastor living in Kibera with his wife and their three children, who started a school for 100 children.
Many of the teachers are unpaid and untrained. Often, their pupils arrive hungry as there has been no breakfast at home and there may well be no lunch. Like many such schools run by volunteers, there are not enough blackboards or books.
Wellington is a member of the Children at Risk Prayer Fellowship (CaRPF), a network linking more than 70 similar projects across a number of slums in Nairobi. It has 82 members working with 10,000 children.
CaRPF aims to improve the lives of children at risk by empowering the Christian organisations that care for them to be more effective. It provides an opportunity for such organisations to meet and work together. Through fellowship, mutual support and the sharing of experiences, resources and skills, CaRPF is enabling young lives to be transformed.
When rioting, bloodshed and protests at allegations of vote-rigging in the general election recently engulfed Kenya, the network responded.
It assessed needs and found funding for children’s projects. The network has also held caregivers’ retreats and training events. Every year it runs a national training conference for more than 300 Kenyans.
The network is also planning to build up more ‘slum schools’ with an ambitious programme of teacher training, buying of equipment and meal provision.
Viva is an organisation providing training and support to the CaRPF network. Viva works in partnership with 12 networks in 9 countries in Africa to train and equip them to develop collaborative initiatives that can help children effectively.
Isobel Booth-Clibborn, Viva’s Africa Regional Co-ordinator, is a CMS mission partner.
Colin Smith, also a CMS mission partner, has established an urban training centre in Kibera.
Viva and the CaRPF network plan to run a training course for child-care workers at this centre to equip and train the participants.
Initiatives like this ensure that some children get to enjoy their youth.
You can support the work of Isobel Booth-Clibborn and Colin Smith through CMS; see Isobel's CMS web page and Colin's CMS web page.
People who’d like to support the work of networks helping children in Africa can
• find out about the work of networks linked to Viva — check out www.viva.org
• pray — information on prayer for children and projects is on the Viva website; the first weekend in June is the World Weekend of Prayer for Children at Risk — see www.viva.org/pray