Calling all you creative types...

What is Urban Cowboy?
The Urban Cowboy concept is simple; this blog here in Sudan, will link street boys here with creative professionals, like you, cross the world. We will then get ideas, designs and tutorials from you, in various different crafts techniques, allowing the street boys to make unique gift and household products to sell here in Sudan.

Do you specialise in crafts like- woodwork, metalwork, sewing, paper products or leather goods design?
Urban Cowboy needs people like you, who will give the team of boys ideas and designs to make here in Sudan. Your tutorials will then be translated into Arabic, so the boys (16 and up) can learn step by step to not only make unique products but learn valuable trade skills, which they in turn will pass on to other boys at the centre.

What is the Bridge of Hope? (for more detailed info click this header)
The Bridge of Hope Charity (www.bohsudan.org) is a holistic project for the street boys etching a living on the streets of Khartoum. Since its inception in November 2003, Barbara, the director and manager, has, with her local team, launched the pre-school learning centre designed to bring the boys up to school level, a drop in/feeding centre, a residential annex and a sports class for older boys.
For 2007, Barbara's hope is to achieve sustainability and self sufficiency within the project.

Who are the street boys of Khartoum? (for more detailed info click this header)
Tens of thousands of Southern Sudanese young men and boys are unlucky enough to struggle on the streets of Khartoum, navigating the pitfalls of disease, despair and chemical addiction. Isolated and displaced by Sudan's 22 year civil war, little education and racial discrimination, they face little chance of ever finding gainful employment in a city already burgeoning with the unemployed.
Although many of the younger boys are now attending the Bridge of Hope learning centre or are financed by the charity to attend local schools, the older boys (16-24) have sadly missed their chance of most education. They need a trade, a skill, something to allow them a small income, training and most importantly, a future.

The Urban Cowboy Project (for more detailed info click this header)
Urban Cowboy aims to combat the perils of unemployment through the sale of modern and currently unavailable household goods and gifts for the local market and Ex-pats. Eventually it is hope that we will even attract interest from international buyers. This will enable the young men of Khartoum's streets, to earn a living in Sudan’s increasingly competitive economy.

Both Sudan’s thriving economic sector and the international fascination with this richly cultured nation, bode well for the sale of quality products including interior household products, gifts and cards.

With funding for tools and materials now approved, Urban Cowboy is well on in the process of establishing vocational training workshops for woodwork, pottery decoration, leatherwork, sewing, paper goods and graphic design; using where ever possible, locally sourced and recycled materials.

Its not just the street boys who will gain...
As Barbara explains, “By using local materials we can, in turn, support other small and valuable local projects in their successes, like the Yous Rittena School for the disabled, which will supply the recycled/handmade paper and the pottery to the project”. The Khartoum Tannery is another locally run and raw product supplier whose skins are all Sudanese and of the highest standards. But sourcing local materials is not just good for the local economy, it also ensures that prices and supply lines will remain much more stable unlike the wildly inflated cost of imported goods.

What we need you to do...

• Firstly, Urban Cowboy needs a logo, something fresh and funky that will become synonymous with our high quality products, yet still explores the boys' rich African culture and its intrinsic links to the cattle they keep.
• Why not visit both the Bridge of Hope website (www.bohsudan.org) and the Urban Cowboy blog (urbancowboysudan.blogspot.com) to get a better idea of who we are and what we are doing here in Sudan.
• Even better, why not link us to your blog/website?
• Or copy and paste this entry into your blog so Urban Cowboy can start reaching the wider creative world.
• Do you have some great design ideas for us?
  Sudan is pretty much closed to all western media, and its impossible to find design or fashion magazines, the internet is heavily censored and satellite television is only available to a small elite, but people want modern fashionable gifts and household items. Being so effectively isolated from modern design we need your help to bring it to us.
  Got a great tote bag design that you know will look fab in organic Sudanese cotton? Well, we want it!
  What about great greeting card designs? Or some original artwork we can replicate on our cards?
  Don't be shy, drop us a line and change someone's life today.

Street kids- Life on the Streets

Sudanese are known for a pleasant hospitality that bridges both Arab and African cultures; and many are sympathetic to the tens of thousands of homeless, impoverished children who roam the streets of the capital city. But in a nation scarred by decades of conflict, many have become inured to the sight of young children begging for food and money.

The majority of Sudanese street children are of southern descent. More than 2 million southern Sudanese settled in and around the nation’s capital during the nation’s twenty-one year civil war between north and south Sudan.
The majority of southern Sudanese live in poverty in squalid camps on the outskirts of Khartoum.

An investment boom has prompted the city to polish its image, and as the price of land has skyrocketed, many southerners have been forcibly relocated into remote, windswept areas outside of the capital—a practice condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups. These new camps lack even the most basic services, including water and schools.

Southern Sudanese also charge that they face racial discrimination when applying for jobs, condemning thousands to lives of poverty. Southerners typically work as day laborers or cleaners—positions that pay very little, particularly in families where it is not uncommon to have three or more children.

Traumatized by war and underemployed or unable to find work, some southern women simply cannot care for their children. Northern children are largely protected by intricate family networks that see a child taken in my relatives if his or her parents are unable to provide care. Furthermore, growing populations of children who have fled the war-torn Darfur region also make their homes on the street.

The life of a street child in Khartoum is unpleasant. Market vendors are largely unsympathetic to the hundreds of children who sleep and beg in marketplaces. Food, water and medical attention are hard to come by—even for the desperately ill. A lack of social programs means thousands of children simply slip through the cracks. Shelters are a rarity and most street children are unable to attend even government schools which charge small admissions fees.

Addiction, though, is the children’s greatest challenge. Street children—mainly boys—ingest glue into their mouths in order to stave off hunger and fear. They buy glue with money they have earned doing odd jobs or begging, leading many people to refuse to give street kids any money at all. Side effects of glue may include irate or erratic behaviour and the practice of ingesting glue can cause permanent damage to the brain.

Despite the challenges street children face, visitors are generally surprised by their almost constant cheer.

The few centers that work directly with street children say they are resilient and predict bright futures ahead for those who escape the pull of street life.