rednoseday

I’m Sigere. I’m 13 and I live in Malawi. I love playing netball. We’re lucky – we’ve got a netball in my neighbourhood. The chief keeps it and we can get it whenever we like.

I live in a small house with my brothers and my mum - Dad died a few years ago. The rest of the family is out working all day so I’m often on my own. It gets boring, but I help out by fetching water and cooking. When he’s home, my brother helps me with my school work or we read.

Now Mum’s got a proper job as a domestic servant, life is much better for us, but when she was just trying to make ends meet doing odd jobs on building sites, it was tough living here. We often didn’t have any food, and Mum hadn’t had time to get me registered in school, so I was really bored. My friends persuaded me to go into the town centre – I didn’t know we were going to beg, but once we started, I found you could make a bit of money quite easily.

I ended up staying on the street, paying a security guard to sleep in a shop doorway if I had enough money. If I didn’t make much, I’d go home and give what I had to my mum: she seemed grateful that we could buy some food. But I was really ashamed to be begging and it was dangerous being on the streets. Lots of girls get attacked.

I first met someone from Chisomo Children’s Club when I was begging. They took me back home, helped me register in school and paid my fees – I was really happy to be doing school work after being so bored. I love to learn, because I know when I grow up I’ll be independent. I’d like to be a teacher. English is my favourite subject and it would be great to visit the UK. Do you all go to school too?

My school is huge – there are 6000 students! There are about 90 in my class. There aren’t enough classrooms so we sit in the playground. At break, I hang around with Sarah, Agnes and Jane. I get on well with them because they don’t like fighting: not like Phallis, who made me really angry gossiping about me. We ended up fighting and fell out.

I still go to Chisomo after school to play netball. They also take us to places we’ve never been, like the national park where we saw rhino and elephants. Amazing!

I'm Remedan. I'm 12. My nickname is Husena, which means 'boy who is everywhere' as I'm always out and about. I live with two of my older brothers, Camilo, 16 and Amano, 14, in a house we built ourselves!

My Dad was a solider, but he went to war when I was a baby and never came back. My mum used to sell vegetables in the market. I enjoyed helping her. I’d go and collect onions and she'd give me money so I could watch action films.

Mum got very ill. She was sick for a long time and I'd go and visit her in the hospital. When she died I was distraught and stopped going to school. I was scared and upset and for a few days I lived on the streets. Mum had asked the women selling onions to look after me, so I stayed close to them to help protect myself. I lost a blanket which I needed to keep me warm on cold nights. Living on the streets can be dangerous and some children get beaten up if they have money on them. After two days Camilo bought me to the ice-cream shop where he worked. He got me a job selling ice-cream for 30birr (£2) a month and I slept in the shop.

After a month we went to JeCCDO. We had nowhere to live because our house had been destroyed. JeCCDO helped us build a new one, but we had to build two, because the first one was made out of tin and it let in the snakes, which really frighten me. Our new house is made of stone and tin and we've decorated it with posters of our Bollywood action heroes. I'm really proud of our home. We all help out with the cleaning and making the fire for cooking.

JeDDCO gives us each money which we use for school, food and for savings. JeDDCO got me thinking about the environment. I like watering the fruit and trees in the project's garden. I tried to plant a tree outside our house for shade but it died. Environmental Science is one of my favourite subjects. I love going to school. I do my homework by candlelight as we don't have electricity. In the future I'd like to be a teacher. In the evenings I play football with my friends or watch TV at our neighbours.

Camilo is brilliant at circus tricks and I enjoy it when he teaches me a few moves. I'd love to go up in a lift one day, as I've never been in one. I'd like to go to a tall building up to the tenth floor and see the view.

I'm Madher. I'm 12 and I love running, playing volleyball and watching Ethiopian Pop Idol.

My dad was a tailor. He died a few years ago. When he was alive I went to school and always had enough to eat. I was so sad when he died. I went to school for a month and then the money ran out and had to stop going. When my friends went to school, I would cry all day. I didn’t do much apart from look at school books and help mum. I felt frustrated and angry.

Mum has to work day and night just so we can survive. She has many jobs. She sorts beans at the coffee board, carries heavy bricks at the construction site and sometimes works as a cleaner. She's often tired.

My little brother Nathaniel, who's 6, is very sick. I help Mum look after him. It makes me upset when we clean his sores because he's in pain. He's too ill to go to school, so I'm teaching him to read and write. It makes me angry that not all children in Ethiopia get the chance to go to school.

We all live together in a one-room house in a compound with other families. We have one light bulb which we rent from another family. The electricity costs more each month than the rent for our room. Life feels hard.

When I heard JeCCDO helped orphans, I went along. They helped Mum pay for the books and uniform I need to go to school. I also go to informal school in the evenings, run by JeCCDO. It makes me so happy to have the opportunity to finish school; I love going and I've won four prizes. My favourite subject is science.

In the evenings I go to my grandmother’s house to do my homework and watch TV. I'm happy when I'm listening to music and I like Ethiopian Pop Idol. I want children in the UK to know what a beautiful country Ethiopia is.

I love running. It makes me feel good. I want to be a good runner like Haile Gebrselassie, though my big dream is to be a scientist and find a cure for AIDS as it’s a huge problem worldwide, not just in Ethiopia – it would make me very happy to do that.

Piczo