Bukavu, 29 January, 2021 / 8:09 pm (ACI Africa).
Members of the Religious Institute of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) ministering in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have, in a report, highlighted a success story of their street youths reunification program.
In the Tuesday, January 26 report obtained by ACI Africa, the leadership of SDB recount the story of 17-year-old Jean-Claude Michaël Imani, who, they say, has had a second chance at life thanks to the Salesians ministering at the Don Bosco Center in the Archdiocese of Bukavu in Eastern DRC.
“Imani had a rough childhood. His mother died when he was two months old and his father was unable to care for him,” SDB officials say in the report published by Mission Newswire, the official news service of the Salesian Missions.
In the report, Imani eventually went to live with his aunt. One day, when he left to visit his father, he got lost along the way, a predicament that forced the eight-year-old lad to live on the streets alone for the next seven years.
On the streets, Imani would be taken to various shelters for street children for rehabilitation unsuccessfully, as he would always find his way back to the streets, a situation the SDB officials say changed in April 2019 when he arrived at the Don Bosco Centre in Bukavu.