Our Advocacy
We stand with street children, amplify their voices, and challenge the systems that ignore them.
Why this matters
Street children are not invisible because they are unimportant. They are invisible because too many people have looked away.
Advocacy is how we push back.
How we advocate
We listen first
We begin with the voices, stories, and needs of street children.
We build confidence
We help children find their voice and speak with courage.
We demand accountability
We challenge families, leaders, and institutions to do what is right.
We stay independent
True advocacy cannot be funded by the very people we are holding accountable. The hand that feeds you can also silence you.
What is advocacy for street children?
It is the work of making invisible children visible. It is the slow, stubborn effort of convincing families, communities, and governments that a child on the street still has rights. Still has a name. Still matters.
At NM House, advocacy does not stop at raising our voices. We raise theirs.
We walk alongside street children and teach them to speak for themselves because no one advocates better than someone who has lived it. Then we make sure the powerful listen. That means engaging everyone: parents who have shut their doors, ministers who have ignored their responsibility, and global bodies like the United Nations who have signed treaties but failed to enforce them.
Our belief
NM House exists to keep advocacy honest, bold, and rooted in truth.
We do not speak for children alone; we stand beside them until they are heard.
Stand with street children
Support advocacy that protects dignity, amplifies voices, and demands real change.
Donate / Volunteer / Partner With Us
But here is what we have learned the hard way.
True advocacy cannot be funded by the very people we are holding accountable. The hand that feeds you can also silence you.
That is why NM House has taken a different path.
The Freedom of Self-Sustainability
We studied leaders who refused to bow. We learned from those who understood that dependence is a leash. And we made a decision:
NM House will generate its own resources.
Our Path to Self-Sustaining organisation
Today, less than 30% of our funding comes from external donors or government grants. The rest over 70% comes from our own enterprises: mobile restaurants, rabbit farms, fish ponds, Yango, taxi, tech centre services, real estate, stock exchange investments, aluminium and glass workshops, car washes, and small businesses run by the very young people we have helped off the streets.
This is not charity. This is economic liberation.
When we speak, we speak because we have earned the right, not because a donor approved our talking points. We do not soften our message to protect a funding stream. We do not look away from government failure because we fear retaliation.
We answer to one person: the child still sleeping on concrete tonight.
A Child Rights Approach—Without the Hypocrisy
We believe street children have the same rights as every other child. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says so. It guarantees them:
Life, survival, and development
Protection from violence, abuse, and neglect
An education that unlocks their potential
Healthcare when they are sick
A relationship with their parents, wherever possible
A voice that must be heard
These are not privileges. They are rights.
Yet despite the Convention being the most widely signed human rights treaty in history, street children continue to be left behind. Governments sign. Then they forget.
We refuse to forget.
Our Advocacy in Action
Global Campaigns, Local Accountability
NM House partners with the Consortium for Street Children and WASAG (West Africa Strategic Advocacy Group) to push for binding UN guidance that makes street children's rights explicit and unignorable. The release of General Comment No. 21 was a victory, but a paper victory means nothing without enforcement.
So now we work tirelessly to ensure every government turns recommendations into reality.
The Four Steps to Equality
In 2021, we joined the Consortium's campaign built on four clear demands:
Commit to equality — no more second-class treatment for street children
Protect every child — from violence, exploitation, and state neglect
Provide access to services — education, healthcare, legal identity
Create specialised solutions — because one size fits none
National-Level Reform
Street children need strong laws, effective policies, and interventions that actually reach them. Every ministry—Social Affairs, Education, Youth Empowerment—has a responsibility under the Convention and the General Comment.
We hold them to it.
But we do it from a position of strength. Because we are not begging. We are not asking for permission.
We are demanding what is already owed.
The Bottom Line
Advocacy without independence is just performance.
At NM House, we have built the economic foundation to speak truth without trembling. We generate our own resources. We limit external funding to 30%. We answer to street children, not to donors.
That is what self-sustaining advocacy looks like. That is how we change the game.
NM House Volunteers and Street children after Yaounde 1 Street Invasion 2024
An Open door day at Our Former NM House Simbock Yaounde Street Children Shelter
