My name is Gabriel Bell, and I am currently volunteering in Saint-Louis, Senegal, with Maison de la Gare, a Senegalese-led nonprofit organisation working on the frontlines to support some of the country’s most vulnerable children: the talibé. These boys, sent away from their families as young as age five, are forced to beg on the streets by the Quranic teachers who claim to shelter them. Maison de la Gare’s mission is to offer them a path out of exploitation through education, hygiene, medical care, safe shelter, and long-term reintegration.

Each year, over 30,000 visits are made to the centre. With extremely limited resources, the team provides meals, showers, literacy classes, vocational training, medical care, and, above all, human dignity.

Across Saint-Louis, thousands of talibé boys live in appalling conditions. They are malnourished and sick, often suffering from malaria, yellow fever, parasites, and skin infections. Many are physically abused, barefoot, and left to sleep outdoors in floodwaters or on dirt floors. They beg daily for food and money, often in dangerous or humiliating circumstances, and are completely unsupported, abandoned not only by their families but also by a system that fails to protect them.

Even those “housed” in traditional Daaras often endure overcrowded, roofless rooms, sleeping 40 children on a single muddy floor with no clean water, no food, no electricity, and certainly no care. During the rainy season, they sleep in standing floodwater, if they can sleep at all.

With your kind contribution, we will assist Maison de la Gare in its vital mission to:

The plight of these children has been normalised and ignored, but it does not take much to make a life-changing difference. As the rainy season approaches, just a few dollars can mean the difference between a child sleeping in the mud or in a clean bed. Your support provides food, showers, safety, education, and hope.

A Personal Note from the Field

During my time working with the talibé children in Saint-Louis, I have witnessed firsthand the extreme hardship they face. In my first week with Maison de la Gare, I joined a night mission through the streets, where we found six- to eight-year-old boys sleeping under market stalls, soaked in the mud, barefoot, and hungry. It was the most difficult thing I have ever seen in person, and it is a cruel world when children barely old enough to cross the street on their own are left to survive in such conditions. This is not an isolated tragedy, this is their daily reality. With the rainy season fast approaching, even those in makeshift shelters at their Daaras will soon be forced to sleep in floodwaters, further exposing them to disease and danger. We urgently need to raise funds to ensure they have food, shelter, medical care, and a safe place to stay during this most dangerous time of year.

With your contributions, I will personally oversee the installation of safe roofing for the children’s sleeping quarters, the purchase of impregnated mosquito nets, and the installation of cement floors and sleeping mats. This will help prevent rain from entering the sleeping areas and reduce the spread of infectious diseases such as scabies, yellow fever, and malaria. All remaining funds will be used to expand Maison de la Gare’s shelter capacity for the most vulnerable children who are forced to sleep on the street.

I invite you to stand with the talibé and support this important work. It truly saves lives.