IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD
Can something be done with the millions of street children?
By Adrian E. Cristobal, Business Mirror
Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
-James Russell Lowell
Aldo, five, did not mean to trap his mother when he asked her if God made everything, to which she answered, naturally, "Yes, He did."
"Why did He make the poor?"
The boy was on his way to school when another child, dirty and sweating, thumped at the car's windshield, his open palm in a familiar gesture. The driver waved the beggar away.
Aldo's question will remain unanswered. In time, he will learn, like most of us, that his is either a wrong or heretical question. Adults, if they're curious at all, seek for the causes of poverty in economic and political conditions, making up theories of development and underdevelopment, and finally proposing various solutions.
But there is no theory, no explanation why children are poor, why they are out in the streets. The common explanation is that their parents are poor or they live in a poor country. But even in rich countries, there are poor children, children who live and work, when they can, in the streets.
Nicole, 18, panhandles in the streets of Toronto, Canada. At last count, there were 66,532 missing-child reports in 2002, of which 52,390 were classified as runaways. A study indicated that more than 70 percent leave home to escape physical or sexual abuse. According to a government report, many of these homeless youth survive on a day-to-day basis by couch surfing or living in overcrowded or unsuitable housing. (In the US, however, poverty is not the main factor that pushes children out. A majority of the estimated 750,000 to one million street children have fled physical or sexual abuse.)
However, Nicole is better off than Tanya, 14, of Harare, Zimbabwe (her parents died of AIDS-related diseases), who had to take care of 10 siblings. She dreamt of going to school and learning to speak English-"good English"-and already speaking a bit of the language, was able to tell her interviewer, "I'm a sister to many, a friend to a few, and a 'wife' to some."
Who are these children?
According to some writers, it's better to think of street children in terms of their relationship to the street. Some come from street families. Others live mainly in the street but may go back to the family in the evenings and make sporadic visits.
Others sleep in night shelters. And a proportion endures periods in jail or institutions or spends their days working in open-air markets.
Most are working children.
Nobody knows for sure how many they are. Anywhere from 30 to 170 million the world over, but that's a guess: they are not included in surveys and censuses. The only statistics come from the numerous volunteer organizations on the ground.
There are some health and gender profiles.
Health: in Toronto, 50 percent had chlamydia; in Cambodia, 40 percent have HIV infections; in Guatemala, 50 percent had sexually transmitted diseases, 92 percent had lice, 88 percent contracted upper respiratory infections due to exposure; skin infections were also common. The irony is that in Guatemala as well as Nepal, urban street children were in better health than children in stable homes in farming villages, "an indicator of the depths of rural poverty in these countries rather than a recommendation for life in the street."
  In the case of gender, there are fewer girls than boys: something between three percent and 30 percent of the population. Girls, however, are more vulnerable to violence, including sexual attacks (although this is a problem for boys, too). Many are lured into brothels. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that over two million children, mainly girls, are exploited through the double P: prostitution and pornography. A million and a half girls and boys are trafficked every year.
Note this: Countries which have the highest reported sexual exploitation of girls are India, the US, Thailand, Taiwan, Brazil, and the Philippines.
Another disturbing profile is the violence done to street children. Here's a finding two years ago by the New Internationalist (the people, the ideas, the action in the fight for global justice):
Law and order officials and self-styled vigilantes both attempt to "clean the street" of these children in many parts of the world. In Latin America, the problem is particularly acute, with the worse offenders being Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras. An average of three street children is killed every day in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In Cairo, street children are routinely rounded up and beaten by the police, their heads are shaven and then they are transferred to crowded detention centers. (I know of a boy who languished in the city jail for years without charges until I sought then Mayor Atienza's intercession for his release, but he died soon after because of ill health. I'm sure this isn't anecdotal.)
Higher rates of drug use and involvement in petty crime make them vulnerable to violence from others like them. The main reason for gang membership is protection. (This is by no means unknown in our cities.)
A glimpse of Asia
One hundred fifty million children work in the Asia-Pacific area-104 million of them in hazardous forms of children labor.
In Bangladesh, over 445,000, 75 percent of them in Dhaka. The numbers of boys and girls are almost evenly split.
In India, 11 million; Mumbai, Delhi, and Calcutta each have over 100,000.
In China, 300,000 of the children also sleep on the streets.
In Myanmar, estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000, less than 25 percent of all Burmese children complete primary schooling.
In Vietnam, in 1995 there were 50,000. In 2001, 75 percent of street children had reportedly left home because of poverty.
In the Philippines, 2005, here's the dope, according to Childhope Asia Philippines: "Glaring inequalities have been the curse of the Philippines, a land blessed with abundant natural resources (is it still?) Over 50 percent of the population lives in dire poverty and land reform is long overdue (they have not seen the government figures).
"Undeclared civil wars are effectively being waged in rural areas as resistance to land grabs and movements for better wages are crushed by military and paramilitary force. In the cities, gleaming supermalls are built over the demolished homes of the poor. The government's wooing of transnational corporations threatens the viability of domestic industry.
"The government estimates that there are 222,400 street children with up to a quarter living in Metro Manila alone. Some nongovernment organizations think the figure is several times higher. UNICEF estimates 5.85 million children live in slums under the threat of violent evictions and more than 100,000 are forced into prostitution and pornography. Sex tourism is rife. Malnourishment among schoolchildren runs at 60 percent."
Mayor Alfredo Lim is certainly not out of step in his campaign against P&P.
Faces
WHO said that the death of one was a tragedy but of millions a statistic? It doesn't matter.
The statistics on street children are appalling; still, what they need is a face to jolt our compassion. The imagination is paralyzed by huge numbers. Knowing that the nearest star is billions of light-years away affects no one's disposition unless they are astronomers.
In the comfort of our cars, we are sometimes annoyed by the tap on the windshield. They look strong, why do they beg? As for the children, why aren't they in school or in bed when it's already night, begging for food when they mean money, or selling sampaguitas? What's the Department of Social Welfare and Development doing, for heaven's sake, for these children who annoy us, who are probably being used by some syndicate by the ugly versions of Fagin?
No one bothers to talk to them apart from foreign journalists who come around and give us a "bad press."
Dinyar Godref and Fran Harvey of the New Internationalist talked to two of them, Lean-Joy, 17, and Jack, 12, "who looks nine."
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In her own words, Lean-Joy related her life: "I'm studying even though I live on the streets. I go to school at 12 noon and go home at seven in the evening. I work from seven p.m. to five in the morning.
I sleep around five hours a day. I don't feel too sleepy in school because I'm used to it
. Whenever we sell, we get chased by the MMDA. They say it's prohibited for vendors to be seen on the pavements. They destroy some of the items we sell: the others they keep for themselves to give to their families. Sometimes when we sleep on the pavements the DSWD people try to catch us; they interview us. They say they will give us a house or a place in the center, but that never happens. My mother got caught. One of them told her that we'd be given a house, but up to now there is nothing.
I want to tell our Mayor: If it's not OK to sell, I hope that they will just tell us to remove our stuff and not destroy it. He should not harm vendors and they shouldn't give away the things we sell because it is like stealing from us.
As for our President, I hope that she will give jobs for poor people."
A common complaint, but at the end, she wouldn't lose hope "because it won't be forever." With Childhope, she became a junior health worker, helping other children, whom she advises not to lose hope "because your life will improve. Study hard so your dreams will come true. Let us pray that the Lord will guide us so that our lives will be happy."
Jack remembers a night at the Reception and Action Center (RAC) after a police "rescue operation," when "the woman who caught us, cornered us and punched me in the nose.
"There was blood and I had a swelling in the eye. I did nothing. My brother also went to the RAC and they beat him. A chair was thrown at him. When I saw that, I escaped.
"I was wounded-here is my wound.
I sleep in the park. Sometimes I wake up during the night. As soon as I wake up I start doing something-I beg, I ask for money and food, even from strangers. Then I sleep again. Sometimes I wake up in the afternoon. I don't like it but I also wipe shoes.... I pick up pieces of cardboard to sleep on at night. The bits that are thrown out by people. It's very uncomfortable. I don't feel protected on the streets. A proper place to sleep would be a house."
That's why he sketches a house for his interviewers. "The house is getting bigger and bigger. This house is for me and my brothers and sisters. Here's a dimple on the sun. Some of my siblings would study and some would guard the house. That's the kind of life I want to have for me and my brothers."
"You must be dreaming!" he's likely to be told. But he dares to hope as Lean-Joy dares to hope, because he now has a Childhope street educator, who like Lean-Joy is a street child with dreams.
The substance of dreams
"For dreams must die," was the title of a '40s best seller by Zoilo Galang, which the publishing company stopped printing for mysterious reasons, one of which perhaps is that it was badly written. We can also dream of helping out, there are many NGOs to contribute to: They exist because governments are long on words and short on deeds. (If you can access the Internet, that means you can afford to help.)
The unequal global system is crushing the poor. The cash worth of "marginal" people keeps dropping, their lives devalued. Children are often forced to the streets by family dysfunction, but in the Majority World (once called the Third) the root cause of dysfunction is usually soul-destroying poverty. The numbers of street children are rising day by day.
Soul-destroying, indeed, for with every Lean-Joy, there's a Rukshana, 15, of Mumbai, the sole care of her 11-year-old sister, who found that it was easy to fall in love but very difficult to endure it.
M Reprinted with permission from Business Mirror
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