About Us

New Generation is primarily a nation building project. We are a registered non-governmental organization focused on supporting, rehabilitation and preventing the occurrence of street children in Bujumbura – the capital city of Burundi – with the goal of developing the next generation of leaders for Burundi and providing a foundation for these children to play an active role in reconciliation both in their local communities and in society as a whole.

Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world and has endured a long history of conflict and ethnic polarization and has recently emerged from a 15 year civil war. Family breakdown and abuse – the fallout of years of conflict and genocide – as well as the prevalence of HIV and AIDS – has left many children orphaned. Many of these children end up on the streets.

Various economic factors such as the high cost of living, the collapse of important export markets, high levels of unemployment as well as an increase in rural-to-urban migration have caused the number of children living and working on the street to increase in recent years. There are no official statistics but it is estimated that at the end of 2010 there were about 3000 street children in Burundi.

New Generation has responded to a lack of social protection and care for street children in Burundi by providing homes, education, leadership training, health programmes, skills training, and, eventually, re-integration into the communities from which they came.

“The reason we started New Generation was to see how young people, especially the street children, can work together and make our country better than it was [during the war].”
(Dieudonné Nahimana, founder of New Generation).