STREET CHILDREN

STREET CHILDREN

Children roam the streets to make money by selling candy, cigarettes or toys, shining shoes, picking through garbage, and begging. Street children may become victims of sexual abuse and drug peddlers, or take on the dangerous habit of sniffing glue or participating in petty crime. Street children often dream of a better life, with a roof over their heads and sufficient(enough) food to eat. Unfortunately, these children have a difficult time breaking out of their unhealthy situations.

According to UNICEF, a street child or youth is any girl or boy (under 18) who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street(in the broadest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, building(abondaned factory), etc.) has become her or his abode and/or sources of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults. This includes the two co-existing categories referred to by UNICEF as those "of the street" and those "on the street".

Children of the Street are homeless children who live and sleep on the streets in urban areas. They are totally on their own, living with other street children or homeless adult street people. These children probably lack parental, emotional and psychological support normally found in a parenting situation. Children on the Street earn their living or beg for money on the street and return home at night. (Parents send their child to the street to beg during a daytime.)

Facts

• At least 150 million children worldwide are believed to live, at least part time, on the streets
• 40% of the world's street children are homeless, the other 60% work on the street to support their families
• Many street children use a number of inhalants (glue, gasoline, lighter fluid) and illegal drugs (marijuana(cheap), cocaine and heroin(expensive)) ex. Morocco's street children smell of the hot tire and pass out.
• Street children are routinely detained illegally, beaten and tortured and sometimes killed by police in some countries                          Sadly, the truck driver didn't notice the children and drove over them. In Pakistan, a guy killed 115 children in a year, but nobody knows.
• An estimated 40 million children live or work on the streets of Latin America- out of a total population of 500 million people
• Up to 10,000 street and underprivileged children die in Lima, Peru every year
• Brazil is estimated to have 12 million(twice population of Osaka!) street children
• 100% of street children in Brazil use drugs
• Mexico City has 1,900,000 underprivilleged and street children, 240,000 of these are abandoned children {Rural areas in Mexico, people have too many kids to afford.}
• France has about 10,000 street children
• Ireland has 500 to 1,000 street children
• Street children in the Netherlands number some 7,000
• Phnom Penh, Cambodia has about 5,000 to 10,000 street children
• There are 6,000 to 7,000 street children in Istanbul, Turkey [It's getting more and more.]
• India has a population of 1 billion with about 35 million orphans, many of whom live on the streets
• Africa has 10.7 million orphans as a result of AIDS and thenumbers continue to grow

Why the children end up street? What brings them to street?

In most rural areas, there aren't enough educations, so people have so many kids and cannot afford them. Therefore, the parents send their children to the street to beg some foods. Or, the parents give up to look after their children, and children go to the street to seek jobs and the places to live. Plus, they have to feed and support their families.