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New: listen to former international cricketer Henry Olonga talk about his experience of street children and the vision of 180 degrees
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FAQs These questions are grouped into six sections as shown on the right.
What is the aim of 180°? 180º exists to multiply the impact of work with street children by creating a united coalition involving the children themselves to: address causes; identify and replicate best practice; support existing member projects; access resources; mobilise new work and advocate with and on behalf of street children.
Why have a global view? This is a good question, particularly since the reality is that most of us don’t. For many it is simply to do with the busy nature of running a street children’s project, the all-consuming nature of such a ministry can mean it is hard to look beyond the desperate needs “on your doorstep”. For others, they think that the cultural differentiation and geographical separation means that there is not much value in a global view on an issue such as street kids. And yet, there are so many similarities between street children found throughout the world and so much important learning that could be shared. Indeed we have experienced that as a global alliance, for example the way that we have been able to share city-wide strategies for street children from countries as diverse as South Africa, the Philippines and Bolivia.
What makes 180° different from other networks? We emphasise that we are not just a connecting, information network, but are about action and results. Thus we prefer the term Alliance. As far as we know 180° Alliance is the only global Christian Alliance dedicated to the issue of street children. It may be the only truly global alliance around the issue of street children that currently exists.
180° can provide your project with resources, via the website, and access to a network of experts who can help guide and train you to improve the professionalism of your project. Through our accreditation scheme, we can provide a structured assessment and supported quality improvement to your project. The first step is to become an affiliate of 180° Alliance.
Who is a street child? Defining a ‘street child’ is complex since obviously every single one of these children is unique and the cultures of children living and working on the streets across the world vary widely. The Consortium on Street Children UK, www.streetchildren.co.uk makes the very useful statement that “the term ‘street children’ is hotly debated. Some say it is negative – that it labels and stigmatises children. Others say it gives them an identity and a sense of belonging. It can include a very wide range of children who: are homeless; work on the streets but sleep at home; either do or do not have family contact; work in open-air markets; live on the streets with their families; live in day or night shelters; spend a lot of time in institutions (e.g. prison); are sex workers. The term ‘street children’ is used because it is short and widely understood. However, we must acknowledge the problems and wherever possible we should ask the children what they think themselves. In reality, street children defy such convenient generalisations because each child is unique.” It is important for the success of interventions that they are based on a good understanding of the children a project is seeking to work with and how many children there are. This will ensure that activities designed are relevant to the needs and rights of the children and that the project has the capacity to meet these needs. The 180° Alliance chooses to use the term ‘children living and working on the streets’ rather than ‘street children’, except where the term ‘street children’ would be more widely understood.
Who is a street working child? A street working child will spend a high proportion of their day on the streets, perhaps selling goods or taking part in casual labour but return to a home at night (this may or may not be with their parents). Some people would include ‘child sex workers’ in this category. Others would include children who beg or work but sleep with their families on the streets.
Have there always been children on the street or is this a recent phenomenon? (Based on, Street Children, by Andy Butcher, Nelson Word, 1996, Introduction and Chapter Three). “Please sir, I want some more.” These words are perhaps the six most famous words of childhood. Oliver says them, in Charles Dickens classic story Oliver Twist. This story, of a boy who runs away to London only to fall into the hands of criminals, was no fairy tale. It was based on the situation of some of the world’s first street children, 150 years ago in England. Industrialisation and the birth of modern-day cities, led to huge numbers of children being abandoned or orphaned and left to fend for themselves. However runaways and throwaway children have existed from ancient times. One of the first stories in the Biblical texts is about a young man, Cain who murders his brother Abel and runs away. According to noted historian John Boswell, “Children were abandoned throughout Europe from Hellenistic [Greek] times to the end of the Middle Ages in great numbers, by parents of every social standing, in a great variety of circumstances.” In Roman times, babies were frequently dumped on communal rubbish tips or abandoned in public squares, from where they were sometimes taken in and cared for, often by Christian families. Tertullian, one of the early Church fathers, wrote “You [pagans] abandon your children to the kindness of strangers or to adoption by better parents.” (John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The abandonment of children in Western Europe from late antiquity to the Renaissance, Pantheon, 1988). Other children, who were picked up from the streets, were exploited. C. John Sommerville, in The Rise and Fall of Childhood, (Vintage, 1990), states that “Most Mediterranean cities had boy brothels, sometimes including castrated males used as sexless prostitutes. Abandoned children were raised as gladiators or deliberately maimed to help in begging.” In 1212 AD, thousands of children from France and Germany responded to what they believed to be a call from God to free Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims, in what became known as the Children’s Crusade. They never made it. Along the way many died as a result of hunger as there was a drought in Europe at the time. Most were robbed and many abused. One group was sold into slavery and the others abandoned their quest and ended up wandering from place to place in small groups. It was as a result of the Industrial Revolution however, that the street children became more commonplace and widespread. These children became known as “Ragamuffins”, “Urchins” and later as “Street Arabs”. During the industrialisation process, Western society was fundamentally restructured, from rural, agriculturally based, small communities to cities based on factories and workhouses. This rural to urban migration, created poor, urban slums, that produced street children. The term “Street Children” was first coined in New York. In 1849, the Police Chief George Matsell called attention to the “deplorable and growing evil” in the city. He was referring to the street children. In his report he described the situation in this way: “Left in many instances to roam day and night wherever their inclination leads them, a large proportion of these juvenile vagrants … practice pilfering … and begging … the female portion … are addicted to immoralities of the most loathsome description.” (Robert H. Bremmer (ed.), Children and Youth in America: A documented history, Harvard University Press, 1970). This report helped prompt the founding of the New York Children’s Aid Society by Rev Charles Brace. Faced by the plight of the homeless boys in London’s East End, Dr Thomas Barnado set up a child-care organisation. Lord Shaftesbury established the Ragged School Union to instruct “the 30,000 naked, filthy, roaming destitute children of London.” (Eileen Simpson, Orphans – Real and Imaginery (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1987). George Muller is also well known for his work with street children and child laborers. These types of initiatives, changes to labor laws and an increase in the standard of living , saw a large reduction in the numbers of street children. However street children was again an issue during the Depression in the UK and USA. It was estimated that there were as many as “half a million juvenile hobos moving around the highways and railroads of the United States” (Jo Boyden and Pat Holden, Children of the Cities, Zed Books, 1991). According to Judith Ennew and Brian Milne, in The Next Generation: Lives of Third World Children, (Zed Books, 1989), the phenomenon was also an issue elsewhere during the Depression: “Free youth wandered around Germany after the First World War, Italy had its child tramps and Russia its wild boys.” It appears that times of upheaval and social change are linked to the issue of street children. Rapid urbanisation and economic and political instability in the developing world, has seen a dramatic rise in the numbers of street children. The developing world has caught up with the more developed world in this respect. Susanna Agnelli, a member of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues set up in the 1980s, commented: “The parallel between street children of the past and present appears in true light when one reflects that the current transformation of developing countries is a continuation of the process which began in eighteenth-century England. Its evolving manifestations have reached the far corners of Mexico and Bangladesh only now. When it is precisely such Western notions of ‘progress’ that have aggravated the lot of the marginal child, the West is in no position to preach about the need to cope with the consequences” (Street Children: A growing urban tragedy – report for the ICIHI, Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1986). Street children are not a new phenomenon. They have existed throughout history. They are the result of economic and resulting social factors as well as family breakdown. And now, there over 100 million street children globally. They are found in both developing and more developed countries and they have many features in common.
Babies can be found on the streets being used for begging by older children, parents or even rented for the purpose. For these children, it is possible that they will grow up knowing nothing other than how to beg. A maximum age is also hard to determine, and may vary from country to country, depending on when a child is considered an adult. According to the UN, a child becomes an adult at the age of 18, which would mean that those found on the streets after this would officially no longer be ‘street children’ but either ‘street youth’ or ‘homeless people’. In broad generalisations, children living on the streets in more economically developed countries tend be over 14, while those in the developing countries may be on the streets at much younger ages.
How many children are there on the street? The question of how many children are on the street is another incredibly difficult one for a number of reasons. Street children live transient lives and often for their own safety avoid authorities, and therefore accurate quantification is difficult. Global estimates are of more than 100 million worldwide (UN) including both children living and working on the streets. Some say there as many as 180-200 million.
What are the contributing factors that cause homelessness among children? Why are there street children? Where do street children come from? Children become homeless for many, interrelated reasons. The most common are: loss of family/community support structure, war, natural disaster, disease, abuse or disharmony in the home. Although the overarching reason of poverty contributes, it is rarely the sole reason. However in the case of street-working children (who work during the day but return to their family homes at night), poverty is often the main reason that children have to take on some of the responsibility for providing financially for the family.
Why do children run away from home? Are they just rebellious or are there other reasons? Children run away from home because things become too difficult to manage and there is a belief within the child that it will be easier to cope alone and away from home, than to stay. A critical aspect to children running away from home is linked to the issues of emotional attachment. Poverty, abuse, neglect and lack of education are all catalysts of children running to the streets, but the crucial factor that means they are able to take the step of leaving home, is lack of emotional attachment to a primary care giver. If there is no-one at home that the child feels safe with, when problems become too extreme or severe in the child’s mind, there is nothing to hold them. Often the behaviour linked to surviving on the streets communicates that street children are just naughty, but this behaviour is simply linked to survival, and also what they have learnt from what has been modelled within their homes and communities and on the streets.
Where are the street girls? There is certainly a smaller percentage of girls than boys who live on the streets. One reason for this is that girls may be considered more useful than boys as domestic workers (cleaning, child minding, cooking etc). With this added value they may be better cared for than boys (though usually not sent to school) and therefore not end up on the streets. However, there are definitely girls on the streets. Girls who come to the streets (for the same reasons as boys) usually get very quickly pulled into a group of children that live on the streets. These children show them how things work, and this group offers a sense of safety and belonging for the girls. Due to some of the gender related issues within society, girls may seem less visible as they spend their days doing some of the domestic related duties within the group while the boys are on the streets begging or parking cars. Girls also quickly attach themselves to a boy that will become their “boyfriend” and protector for as long as this relationship lasts. Before girls begin to develop physically it is sometimes easy for them to be mistaken as boys. As girls grow up and develop, it is then that they become susceptible to being pulled into sex work, formal or informal. Since they are often kept by those that they are working for, they slip into the dark places of society and once again become invisible. The life span of the girl child on the streets is far less than boys. Abuse, violence, HIV/AIDS and the constant re-infection from not using condoms and having multiple partners, leads to an early death.
What do street children live on and how do they eat? Most street children live by casual labour, such as selling things, washing car windscreens, guarding cars or by begging. This is not an easy way to survive and with the tough conditions on the streets, many quickly get caught up in a life of petty crime, often trained up by older street people. Girls in particular, although not exclusively, are particularly vulnerable to becoming involved in the sex trade as a survival method on the streets.
What do local people think about street children? It is extremely hard to generalize. Opinions obviously also vary from person to person – some local people feel very sympathetic to the plight of street children, and some get involved in different ways, whereas others are unsure of how they can help. On the other hand, in the difficult situations that street children find themselves in, some will get involved in petty crime, and although this is not the case for all of them, this often becomes a generalized perception among the public who may fear street children for this reason.
How are local people helping and why are they not doing it themselves? You will probably find that the organisations doing the most effective work are local or locally staffed. Although they may not often get noticed, there is often small-scale, important work that goes on. The problem is that there is a lot of work to be done and not enough people with the right skills and character that are ready to sacrifice what they need to, to achieve it.
How is the church involved with this work? This is obviously a question that varies across the world, but if you define ‘the church’ as Christians wherever they are found, you will see that a significant proportion of the organisations working with street children are motivated by Jesus. You will see from our vision and values that 180° is an alliance of Christian faith based organisations.
Why is drug taking so much of an issue with street children?/ Why do children sniff glue and what are the affects of this? Taking drugs is simply a coping mechanism that children learn from each others, which helps they to survive the harsh life on the streets. The chemical components of glue numbs and dulls the sensors of children which subdues feelings of hunger, cold and emotional vulnerability. With no other way to cope with and process the pain and difficulty that comes with life on the streets and all the distress that led to them leaving home, sniffing glue distances children from their real needs and they feel that they manage better. Glue sniffing can also be a statement to society from children who know that they are disliked because of how uncomfortable they make people feel. There is a power play that is linked to sniffing, allowing them to feel that they have something that creates conflict for adults, and for which adults have no power over. The long term affects of sniffling glue for children is long-term brain damage as these cells are unable to be repaired, and depending on the lead content of the glue being sniffed, excessive glue sniffing over long periods of time can create paralysis.
Is it good to give children money? It is often hard to resist giving children money. Knowing that children go hungry, and often because we do not know what else to do, it is easy to hand over some change just to get them to go away. There are very mixed opinions on whether to give children money on the streets. There is a view that giving children money, results in making it easier for children to stay on the streets, enabling them to not only buy food but supporting their drug taking habits. It is often better to give children food, sandwiches or apples that you carry with you, rather than giving money that often goes towards buying glue or other drugs.
How do Governments respond to street children? The Governments of Uganda and Zimbabwe and the City of Durban in South Africa have resorted to rounding street children up and dumping them outside cities or interning them in juvenile detention centres. In Zambia in the past they tried education programmes for the general public explaining that giving to street children encouraged more children to come to the streets. In other countries the issue of street children is ignored or left to Non-Government Organisations to deal with. In worst case scenarios there has been extreme violence perpetrated against street children with the complicity of Governments. In Sao Paulo, Brasil, the private sector has got involved with banks in the city centre commissioning an NGO to move the street children out of the city centre. Strategic multi-agency, multi-level responses that address both prevention and restoration of street children are only now starting to be attempted. Examples include Cachabamba, Bolivia led by Toybox and Red Viva; Manila, Philippines facilitated by Action International and in South Africa with the input of former street children working with Umthombo Research and Action. All these organisations are members of the 180° Alliance.
What is the position of the police? The police are generally agents of government and so implement policies that the government legislates or decrees. There are however many documented incidents where the police have acted against street children in the employ of businesses.
Is the situation getting any better? In 2007, for the first time in history, it is estimated that more people live in cities than live in rural areas. With this trend of rural-urban migration only likely to continue, it would follow that there will be more street working children as a result. In addition the familial conditions which force children to live on the streets such as abuse and neglect are ongoing, as well as other causes such as war. It would appear that unless these causal issues are addressed the situation will only continue to deteriorate. Between 1995 and 2003, the Scripture Union programmes in Zimbabwe, found that they were able to contain the numbers of street children but not reduce the number, due to the fact that causes persisted.
What can ‘ordinary’ people like me do? There are lots of ways that you can make a difference to street children, wherever you live and whatever your skills are. The best place to start is to contact a good street children’s organisation that perhaps works near you or in an area that you have a particular area. Think creatively about how you could use your skills- even if you are not able to work directly with street children, for each individual street children’s worker there are many more people that need to be supporting them to make them effective. It might be that you can organize an event, such as a fashion show, that could be used to raise awareness and money for people working with directly for street children. Obviously joining 180° will link you into the news of what is happening with street children around the world, receive prayer updates as well as being aware of areas of need that might fit with your interests and skills.
What sort of organisation should I support?/How do I know that an organisation working with street children is ok? A great question! This is often not easy to determine, particularly if you are not an expert in the field. One helpful way is to look for affiliation to an association that does much of this ‘checking’ for you. Examples of these are the Consortium for Street Children UK (www.streetchildren.org.uk) and of course 180° Alliance - you can check our conditions for membership here. Some general guidelines though:
Where do I find out more information on organisations working with street children? Well, this website is a good start! Other good portals are www.streetchildren.org.uk and www.streetchildafrica.org.uk, www.enscw.org, www.shinealight.org
Can I visit street children work in another country? Many organisations organize short-term teams or tours of their projects – the best way is to contact organisations directly and ask how they organise it. It may be that they work with a partner organisation to do this so that it doesn’t detract time and resources away from the running of the project itself. You should expect to be asked for a police clearance and references at least.
What kind of training do I need to work with street children?/I am interested in working with street children, what should I do?/ I want to start a ministry to street kids in my church so how do that? Initially consider engaging in a short-term way just to find out whether it’s something you are cut out for. Try and find, local to you, a way of engaging with those on the streets. If your sense of call is confirmed by this experience, then look to pursue some training and at the same time seek out an organisation which has an ethos.
What about child protection and child abuse? It is vital that all organisations working with street children have and abide by a child protection policy. 180° Alliance membership guidelines, insist on all member organisations implementing a child protection policy. You can see a sample of a child protection policy here. Organisations should require police clearances and should follow up references/referees wherever possible when recruiting staff and volunteers locally or from overseas.
Do organisations working with street children work together? This depends on the organisation! Many organisations do see the value of working in partnership, and indeed the 180° Alliance is proof of this at a global level. The main issues that have been identified for why organisations do not work together are: pride, competition for resources and ideological difference. |
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