Return to Senegal

I am a financial advisor in Canada. I help people plan for peace of mind by assisting them to manage their money, build retirement income strategies, and invest in a responsible manner. I also volunteer in Senegal to help improve the lives of children who are forced to beg for hours daily.

These children are boys, as young as age four. They are recruited typically from villages and even other countries by false marabouts who promise a Koranic education. But instead, the boys are forced to beg for daily quotas of money as well as their own food, and receive little if any Koranic education. The United Nations considers this practice child trafficking. Human Rights Watch has labelled the forced begging of these boys a human rights abomination. These are the talibes.

My father, Rod LeRoy and I have been working as partners with a grassroots Senegalese charity, Maison de la Gare, since 2010. We have been to the city of Saint Louis six times since then to help fulfill the vision of Maison de la Gare, building classrooms, an infirmary, a garden, apprenticeship programs, a library, and most recently a house of transition for young runaway talibes as well as older children transitioning to an independent life.

I will be returning to Saint Louis this week with my husband, Robin, my daughter Rowan, age 16 and my son Robbie, Age 13.  Rowan and I have been to Maison de la Gare together three times, this will be her fourth volunteer trip to work with the boys who have become her friends. In my case, I am returning to help the boys who I have come to care for as my own.