Street Children

INTRODUCTION

One of the miseries brought by the modern civilization is the situation of the street children.

In the old times, and still now in some areas, children worked with their parents and reamed a lot of things from them; later, children looked after aged parents, and therefore much value was put on children, and there was strong bond of affection between parents and child.

However, now it has changed. Parents go to work, and children do not go to work with them. Children only cost much money for food and education. Parents of a poor family are suffering from much financial stress. As the stress becomes bigger, their love for their children decreases. Then, a home, which should be a place children receive affection, becomes a place where they receive pain physically and mentally. Therefore, in some cases, children choose not their house, but the street.

Street children may express satisfaction with the freedom from abuse by parents or by siblings; nevertheless, their lives seem not so easy.

They live from hand to mouth, working in some odd jobs; if they have no job, the steal to eat, and if they have extra money, they buy drugs.

In general, street children's lives are rather short. They are in bad health, because of their abuse of drugs, venereal disease and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Some are killed in conflicts with rival gang groups. Sometimes children's corpses are discovered in the condition in which their internal organs are removed skillfully. They are used for organ transplants in secret.

Furthermore, if they could grow up, the situation might be worse because they would grow up with no special skills and the few jobs they could do would all be taken by younger children. Therefore, their future seems difficult.

Most people are not acting for street children; however, some are tackling this problem earnestly. They proffer social programs and shelters, where children can take a shower, sleep free from care, and can obtain food, clothes and education.

For these people, the most difficult thing is to make themselves relied on by children. Street children are apt to be suspicious of others. The most important things are to give them affection ungrudgingly and to make them learn how to communicate with others. These are things that children could not learn from their families.

Different countries describe street children in different ways. In the Philippines, three general categories have been frequently used to identify them: (1) children who actually live and work in the streets are abandoned and neglected or have run away from their families; (2) children who have regular contacts with their families but spend most of their time working in the streets; and (3) children of families living in the street

Our desire to help the Street kids is one of the reasons why we did choose this topic, "A Helping Hand for Street kids", for our research. Other is that, we would like to know why kids love to spend most of their time on streets than with their own families. Also, we would love to study how the government and non-government organizations acted on this kind of situation and how do they think for a possible solutions to lessen the number of street kids in our society.

Lastly, it is because we want to answer some questions about this topic that will probably add knowledge and information not just for our own concern but also for the readers who are interested in our research. Some of these questions are as follows:

A. Who are those considered as Street Children?

B. Why do they spend most of their time on the street or what pushes them to stay or live on the street?

C. What programs are made, if there's any, by some organizations to protect the kids and how do these programs provide brighter future for them?

D. What are the effects of the increasing number of Street Children in our society?

E. What are some of the difficulties and problems faced by the kids on the street?

SCOPE......

HISTORICAL BACK GROUND

In 1983, the Ministry of Social Services and Development (MSSD) started a pilot project to identify and assist street children. Eighteen outreach workers were recruited and assigned to fifteen cities. These workers did referrals, conducted actual outreach on the streets, conducted interviews, made initial contact with families or elatives, and prepared initials diagnosis and action plans. In Manila and Davao City, MSSD provided temporary shelter, intake, counseling and referral services through drop-in centers. Reception and action centers run by two city governments receive street children picked up by police for various offenses. Under the "City of Man" concept of the former First Lady Imelda Marcos, street children were regarded as nuisance and eyesore, they had to be eliminated from the street. Temporary shelter, counseling and value inculcation seminars with families were made available. However, these efforts provided little impact on their situation. Most of them went back on the street after their release form the shelter since they had no other alternative to earn a living.

From 1984 to 1990 two networks of non-government social development agencies were organized for advocacy, capability-building and coordination. These agencies supported rehabilitation programs for street children and prevention programs that helped deter child trafficking. The first programs started with a committee of five agencies, under the Council of Welfare Agencies of the Philippines, Inc. (CWAPI), now known as the National Council for social Development Foundation (NCSDF). By 1986, eighteen agencies had responded and by 1991, there were about sixty nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government organizations (GOs) working with street children in the National Capital Region.

CWAPI (now NCSDF) formed a Special Committee on Street Children composed of NGOs and GOs working with street children. They met monthly for sharing and planning on situation analysis and advocacy, they continue to operate up to the present.

Following the initial work done by the NCSDF Committee, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Manila supported a one-month field study visit of street children programs in Brazil in late 1984. The team included Leopoldo Moselina,