Afghan street children finding way out of poverty through job training programs
The Associated Press
Published: December 23, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan: Ahmed Fawad pushed his handcart through Kabul’s chaotic market center, past honking cars and braying donkeys, looking for a profitable spot to sell his pile of yellow apples.

But the corner traffic cop did not like the 14-year-old fruit seller taking up a lane of his traffic and chased him away. "Go away," the policeman shouted. "This is not the place to be selling apples."

Youngsters have to grow up fast in Afghanistan — particularly the 60,000 children who eke out livelihoods on the street. They sell produce or newspapers, collect empty soda cans, shine shoes or hail passengers for taxi drivers as a way to help their families survive.

Fawad’s mornings are spent selling apples or red pomegranates, which can net him up to $8 (€6.22) a day.

His afternoons are dedicated to his future.

That’s when the teenager studies carpentry at a vocational training center sponsored by the Social Affairs Ministry. Fawad is one of 37,000 young Afghans taking part in some kind of job education across the country, said Mohammad Ghous Bashiri, a deputy minister.

The classes are held in provincial community centers, often with the help of aid groups. They are one way the Afghan government is trying to help street children, many of whom were orphaned by the country’s wars in the 1990s.

Many street kids do not go to regular schools, because they cannot afford to buy supplies or because they must dedicate every hour of the day to making money.

A recent survey by UNICEF, Save The Children and the Ministry of Social Affairs found some 8,000 children age 14 and younger work on the streets of Kabul, said Wahidullah Barikzai, a ministry official. There are not any statistics to show whether that is up or down from previous years, he said.

Poverty runs so wide and deep in Afghanistan that families must struggle to earn money. Years of fighting, first by Afghan groups against occupying Soviet troops and then among the factions themselves, killed thousands of men, leaving many households without a breadwinner and untold numbers of women and children to fend for themselves.

Some working children say they also cannot take time to go to the training centers. "My father is dead," Ahmed Shafiq, 13, said while selling plastic bags on a crowded street. "And I have my mother and three sisters I have to support."

Fawad’s fruit-selling job provides much of his family’s income and pays for the family’s $40 monthly rent. His father hasn’t been able to find work since he was fired from the Education Ministry last year, while his mother and 16-year-old sister make dresses they sell to neighbors. Fawad also supports his 9-year-old brother.

Fawad said he was excited when he heard about the carpentry course offered by a foreign aid group. He is tired of selling produce and wants the chance to do something different.

"I want to be a carpenter and participate in the reconstruction of my country," said the teen, who will soon earn a certificate allowing him to look for work in carpentry. "I will have a good income when I make windows and doors."

The Afghan aid organization Aschiana, which means "nest" in the Afghan language of Dari, offers street kids classes in subjects like carpentry, computers, music and theater.

Nearly 10,000 have attended the group’s classes in three provinces, and hundreds have found jobs so far, said Mohammad Yasouf, the Aschiana director.

"We try to help those children who have nobody in their families to support the family to learn one of the skills, then we will provide the opportunity for them to find a job," he said. "We don’t want them to be on the streets anymore."

Shoaib Ahmedi, a 12-year-old who washes cars and hails cabs for passengers to buy food for his family, comes to Aschiana’s music classes with dirty hands and dirty clothes. But his face lights up as he practices the harmonia, a small keyboard instrument that sounds like an accordion.

"I have to work on the street and support my family. I have no any other choice," he said between songs. "I feel very happy when I play the harmonia by myself."

Big heart, hundreds of shoes

The corners of the storage rooms at the Educational Advance Inc. offices located on Schenkel Lane boast stacks of boxes, some housing computers, others waiting to be filled with blankets, shoes and other necessities.
To hear Linda Nallia describe it, only a month ago the building was stuffed with loaded boxes creating a maze when it came to navigating the office.
Linda Nallia, vice president of Education Advance Inc., and husband Bill Nallia, president of Educational Advance Inc., edit videos and provide other services from the offices.
While they create and edit video presentations for outside organizations such as the Kentucky Housing Authority and translate videos into languages to send to countries such as Russia, their primary focus, particularly Bill Nallias, is helping children who live on the streets in Romania.
"He really does have such a big heart," Linda Nallia said. "He has seen what they dont have and how they live."
How it started
Bill Nallias first experience with homeless children in Romania came as a videographer on a mission trip to the country 12 years ago.
He was drawn to the children and knew immediately he wanted to help them.
"I told Linda ‘weve got to do something for these kids," he recalled.
Nallia said the children were doing anything to survive, including prostitution, begging and stealing.
"Whatever it took to be able to make it," he said.
In 1998, after several trips to the country, Bill Nallia created the Lonely Voices Childrens Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Frankfort with a mission to assist children living on the streets of Romania.
The foundation teamed up with the Bethel Foundation located in Romania; the two act as partners to meet the needs of the street children in the country.
Three full-time workers from the foundations walk the streets of the country providing food, clothing and medical attention to more than 2,000 homeless children.
In November Lonely Voices shipped 1,000 pairs of shoes, 1,600 pairs of socks and hundreds of blankets to the country before the harsh Romanian winter set in.
Donations to Lonely Voices come from organizations and individuals across three or four states Nallia said.
The shoes were made possible by a Dallas, Texas based organization called Buckner Orphan Care International Shoes for Orphans Souls, while personal hygiene supplies such as shampoo and insect repellent came from Avon.
Aside from meeting basic needs, the foundation builds facilities to house churches, schools and training programs in the hopes of educating the children so they may get jobs, flats (housing) and independence.
Major accomplishments
Nallia said Lonely Voices does a number of things to aid the long-term needs of children in Romania.
He said recently the foundation sent sewing machines to the country so full-time workers in the Lonely Voices and Bethel Foundations training center can use the machine to teach girls how to sew, which would make girls more marketable to Romanias booming garment production industry.
Donations of computers from the local organization, Salvation PC, allow Romanian children to develop skills in technology another way to make them more employable.
Another project Lonely Voices is participating in is developing a soccer league for the children.
"Were trying to get the children connected to something other than begging," he said.
According to Nallia, who visits the country one to three times each year, the street children are escapees from the countrys poor orphanage system, or sent away by parents unable to care for them, or runaways from abusers.
He said many of them slip into the sex industry, either as prostitutes or are sold to pedophiles as a way to make money. He said the children often form gang-like groups known as "surviving families" which leads to second and third generations of street children.
Lonely Voices main goal is to change these circumstances.
"We try to convince them that theres a better way," Nallia said. "Were able to turn some of them around."
Nallia recounts several success stories during the foundations eight-year span, including that of a 14-year-old girl who was wrongly jailed but now at age 16, is free, has a job and mentors other street children as a spokesperson for the foundation.
Another tale of success comes from a small village in Romania. Nallia said five years ago children would run nude during warm months and only three people in the 3,000-citizen village could read.
"I was blown away when I walked into that village," he said.
Through Lonely Voices, Nallia was able to build a school building and provide clothing to the children.
"The turnaround has just been amazing," he said.
Now more than three people can read.
"When Im there, they love to demonstrate to me they can read," he said.
A few obstacles
He said the Romanian government makes it difficult to provide housing to children, especially at the already established Bethel Shelter, because officials are more concerned about keeping up a good image, rather than helping the children.
"The government doesnt want us to do anything that would encourage street children," Nallia said.
But, he added, through the work of the foundation the children are able to get jobs and become taxpayers, which in turn benefits the government.
Despite issues with the government, Nallia said the biggest challenge is funding.
"Were always short on money," he said.
But a lack of funding wont stop Nallia, whose desire to help children stems from working in education for three decades.
"The deep rooted concern is from being an educator for 30 years and seeing how poor some kids are," he said. "Everything I do day-to-day is something that will enhance Lonely Voices efforts with these children."
Nallia said he was called to be a missionary to Romania.
"Knowing the value of education, being born into an extremely poor family, the thing that pushes me more than anything else is my faith," he said.
Linda Nallia said she stays behind the scenes while her husband follows his mission.
"He said in his lifetime he wants to help others," she said.
Larry Cave, who sits on the board of directors for Lonely Voices said Bill Nallias focus is what makes the foundation successful.
"Hes a very focused Christian," Cave said. "Hes a very humble gentleman."
Cave said while the organization faces many difficult obstacles, Nallias leadership and faith would enable it to continue doing work to serve the children of Romania.
"Obviously, the road is long, the mission is tough, theres a lot of needs we cant get to yet," Cave said.
Nallia said he doesnt worry about the near impossible task of reaching all of the thousands of children living on Romanian streets.
"We just accept the basic premise one child at a time," he said.

 

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) — A small American Baptist ministry has hit the big time. On Dec. 22, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams will feature Hope Unlimited on its weekly “Making a Difference” segment.

Co-founded by David Swoap and father-son team Jack and Philip Smith in 1991, Hope Unlimited is an International Ministries agency within the American Baptist Churches USA. Led by Philip Smith and his wife, Corenne, it helps Brazilian street children by providing shelter, food, education and vocational training. In 2006, Hope Unlimited received the Kanitz Award as one of Brazil’s top 50 charities for the decade.

Steve Bostian, the U.S. director for the Los Alamitos, Calif.-based ministry, said the lives of street children in Brazil are beyond dire. And with current media coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, the plight of Brazil’s 7 to 10 million street children has been completely overlooked, he said.

That’s why the Smiths decided to approach the network about featuring the ministry. Broadcasters and camera crews traveled to Brazil in November to film Smith and the operation for several days.

“The situation with street kids in Brazil has not gotten a lot of attention,” Bostian said. “Only 18 percent of these kids are biological orphans. The rest are social orphans. They think they would be better off on their own away from their home. Most die from violence in the streets.”

Today, 20 million children live at or below the poverty level in Brazil. Many of the children on the streets choose to live there instead of facing abuse from family members. Others live on the streets simply because they have been abandoned by their parents.

Many of the children suffer from poor health and malnutrition. Because of rape and forced child prostitution, they are often exposed to HIV/AIDS. According to the Brazilian Center for Children and Adolescents, Brazil has more than 800,000 child prostitutes. Drugs also run rampant among the children, who sniff glue to escape reality.

With a population of 160 million, Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country. It is rich in natural resources, with large business sectors in bio-technology and manufacturing, but its poverty levels reach almost 25 percent.

The problem with street children became so bad in the late 1980s that Brazil had “large-scale, deliberate, systematic killing of street children by death squads who enjoyed a high degree of impunity for their actions,” according to the Hope Unlimited website. “Street execution" was once listed by Amnesty International as the third leading cause of death for Brazilian children.

Hope Unlimited aims to alleviate those seemingly hopeless conditions. The program in Campinas, which houses 180 boys and 65 girls, emphasizes vocational training. Eighty-five boys also live at Hope Mountain in Vitoria, another location for the program.

Most boys join between the ages of 12 and 15, while girls — who fall prey to prostitution at a young age — join as early as 8 years old. The children are often referred to Hope Unlimited by social workers or simply appear at the boarding house, looking for refuge.

Once there, children receive love and attention from 80 staff members, including teachers, pastors, psychologists, social workers, music teachers and cooks, who work with local doctors to help them. The campus even has a lake, football field, 10 horses, and a farm. Many of the students take music lessons and go on outings and camping trips.

Children who graduate from the program are guaranteed jobs when they leave at 18 years old. They also receive household furnishings and tools for the trade they learned.

One graduate, now a third-year law student with a paying internship at a prestigious law firm, was especially excited to be featured by the NBC crew, Smith wrote in a letter about the visit. The student so impressed firm representatives that they did not even realize he had formerly lived on the streets, he said.

Funds for the operation initially came from several large international donations, although for the past two years, almost two-thirds of operational and capital financing has come from Brazilian sources. The goal is eventually to be completely sustained by Brazilian sources, according to www.hopeunlimited.org.

Right now, the most important thing is to use the NBC segment to get the word out about “unsung heroes” giving their lives to serve the kids, Bostian said.

“The volume of homeless children [is huge],” he said. “We hope the show will raise a lot of awareness.”

Excluded and invisible

---

Click to view caption

Street children are subjected to abuse, malnutrition and sexual harassement on a regular basis. At many times, their conditions lead them to inflict their painful state on others

Mohamed, 12, is showing off his new clothes. He got them right here from Hope Village, he explains, which also provides him with meals, hot showers, medical and social care. At the institution’s Day Care Centre in Sayeda Zeinab, Mohamed confesses that he has been on and off the streets since his father died 10 years ago, when his stepfather proved abusive. After he was old enough to strike back, he was permanently banned from home. As a tabbaa, microbus driver assistant, he managed to get by. At one point he moved to Alexandria. (On the way he even witnessed El-Torbini at work, he reports: the infamous street gang leader who made the headlines after his arrest for raping and killing street children on top of the fast "turbini" Cairo-Alex train, had delivered his trademark, fatal shove when, happily, passersby walking along the tracks managed to catch the unfortunate victim just in time to save his life). Once in Alexandria, however, Mohamed was arrested — only to be released back onto the streets. "But I don’t sleep in the open," Mohamed is quick to add. "I sleep in a mosque…" Mohamed says no such misfortune befell him but, according to centre head Khaled Dawoud, no less than 99 per cent of street children are sexually abused on a regular basis. Talking to Mohamed, now, it feels strange to have driven past so many of those clinging souls who cling to one’s car windshield or clothes insisitng that you buy their disposable tissues, flowers or simply give them money — never bothering to give them a name. Indeed a 2006 UNICEF report indicates that there are in the cities of the world millions such "excluded and invisible" children, impoverished, uneducated and malnourished. In Egypt numbers are yet not forthcoming, though a new survey promises to give a relatively accurate estimate. But in the end, one is inclined to ask how such a state of affairs comes about despite human rights treaties and international laws.

According to Fadia Abu Shehba, professor at the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research, "the factors are numerous, including fragile families, broken homes and the absence of one of the two pillars of the family. Lack of compatibility within homes gives way to domestic violence, forcing children to run away. And this is not to mention the complete lack of any form of parental guidance. Besides, crammed into little apartments with as little as one room for 10 people, children often see their parents having sex and want to copy them, initially with siblings, hence rape and harassment. Children choose the street, where there is enough room, only to be exploited by street gangs, whether sexually, in the drug trade or, more recently, trading internationally in their body parts." Throughout the 1990s, especially, rising unemployment rates and inflation have contributed to the erosion of the moral fabric of society, giving way to a heartless materialism that doesn’t balk at exploitation through child labour or early marriage. As Dawoud points out, another factor is dropping out of school: failing to see the point of education, students skip classes, thus taking their first steps on the streets; once this forms into a pattern, a child will spend the night out simply to avoid confrontation with his parents. Thankfully organisations like Hope Village — according to its chairwoman, Abla El-Badry, the first organisation in Egypt to cater especially to street children — understand all this.

Hope Village provides for 4,000 children every year; most come from broken homes with a strong component of domestic violence; some five per cent are literate. Children are housed in temporary shelters where they can resume their studies or take up vocational training; money allocated to them, together with any money they make, is automatically saved and part of it goes towards the purchase of a small flat. "We provide for some 180 children in our shelters, aside from those whose families we manage to contact. Some 700 families have been supported using a micro-credit programme on condition that they take the child back in." Hope Village reception centres have also conducted blood tests on all those who walk in (an average of 35 children a day), as part of the national campaign against AIDS; so far results have been invariably negative. A greater challenge, says Dawoud, is to persuade the children to give up peddling and begging, which can bring in up to LE90 per day; at the shelters they receive no more than a pound’s allowance. Street children, says Dawoud, are classified into first-timers, regulars and leaders, the latter, who are often violent and capable of murder organise the day’s work, oversee their younger partners, and molest them at night. Another challenge he mentions is when parents decide to have the children back — no guarantee, in that case, that they will not abuse them as they did before they first left home. Here too nothing can be done.

For her part, El-Badry highlights a different problem: street girls bearing nameless unregistered children who make the census unreliable. Hope Village has paid attention to them since 2000, and in 2005 opened a centre dedicated to teenage street mothers. According to Amal Abdel-Rahman, the woman in charge of the latter, many street pregnancies are the consequence of rape, yet it makes the rape victim, already cast off by her family, even less acceptable to them, producing a new generation of street children: "We now have 10 young mothers — children bearing children — who don’t know how to provide for them. In many cases, infants end up dead or kidnapped. They come here seeking a stable shelter, but many of them leave again to become sex workers, often due to drug addictions." Amira, who has stayed, was only 13 when she ran away from home to sell flowers, sleeping in a public park. "To avoid prostitution," she says, "I had to marry the neighbourhood thug" — a urfi or unregistered marriage, evidence of which tends to remain in the husband’s hands — "and he disowned me once he realised I was pregnant, destroyed the contract and disappeared. I tried to abort myself but didn’t manage to, then I talked to the social worker at Hope Village, who explained that there was a place for me here. I wish I’d come straight here when I first left home." Amira works as a nurse; she has reached level six of the literacy programme and is learning how to raise her son, now one. "That’s what my problem is now: my son is illegitimate, so I can not legally obtain a birth certificate. My worst nightmare is that someone should stop me on the street and demand proof that I am this child’s mother." A parentless child might be issued a birth certificate by the government, explains Abdel-Rahman, but a fatherless one cannot; he will get neither an education nor any other government service; such, sadly, is the law.

More generally, Mushira Khattab, secretary-general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), feels that not enough attention is paid to street children: "I’m glad about the case of El-Torbini, sad as it is: it indicates that we as a society are waking up." Legal amendments in the Child Law are underway and should be submitted to parliament by the end of the month, she announced. This will help people like Amira obtain birth certificates for their children. Yet she believes children should be returned to their parents, who now have the easy option of abandoning their offspring to NGOs; the families should rather be assisted, the reasons behind children ending up on the streets countered: "Don’t ask me to amend the law to allow NGOs custody at the expense of parents. I want to discourage parents from giving away their children. A broken, illiterate family might think of their immediate need rather than the best interest of their child. It’s my duty to show them that they have a responsibility, whether I represent the government or an NGO." Will the new amendments provide for a penalty against parents who abandon their children? All Khattab is willing to divulge is that it will stress both the responsibility of the family and that of the state to empower it: "We are concentrating on the right of the child to family care. If we don’t limit the tendency to give up children, abandoning children will be a ‘business’ option for everyone." Legal amendments, it is worth noting, are part of a programme the NCCM is undertaking in partnership with other government bodies, NGOs and UNICEF, its object being the implementation of a national strategy for the protection, habilitation and re- integration of street children, which was launched back in 2003. A hotline for lodging complaints was launched in June 2005, in collaboration with a number of NGOs.

Salma Wahba, adolescence officer at UNICEF Egypt, says that according to the present law, street children fall under the category of children in danger of being juvenile delinquents: "We are lobbying for listing them as children at risk, hence sparing them any police interference. Moreover, UNICEF is aiming at a comprehensive approach, with a social body that provides safety nets, monitors school dropouts, offers children health insurance and protects them from arrests." On a parallel note, Nadra Zaki, the child protection project officer at UNICEF, explained that on the advocacy level, UNICEF worked with governmental and non-governmental bodies to support the aforementioned strategy; more recently they have supported NGOs by helping children such as those supported by Hope Village to communicate messages to their peers on the street; they also secured funding for the young street mothers’ shelter. Street children ought to be a national priority, as Abu Shehba concluded — better improve security on the streets than secure them for government authorities: "Those children lost all sense of belonging — they will grow up to be terrorists if we continue to ignore them."

The children’s names were changed and their faces blurred to protect their right to privacy.

Facts and figures

ACCORDING to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa’s final report on drug abuse among street children in Cairo and Alexandria in 2002 (a study conducted on a sample of 50 children), 86 per cent face violence, 48 per cent face social rejection and 14 per cent do not know how to co-exist; 82 per cent of street children are on the streets because they were abused by their families or at work, 62 per cent due to negligence and 36 per cent due to peer pressure.

MOTIVATED by the plight of injured street children, a man became a beggar for two months in Shenzhen to learn about their circumstances.

In a 20,000-word investigative report of his observations circulating at the highest levels of the government, he said the handlers of the kids often intentionally injured them to increase the kids’ fundraising value. Further, loopholes in urban management have failed to prevent many cruelly injured children from begging in the streets of big cities, he said.

Cao Dacheng, 76, who lived in the city of south China’s Guangdong Province, pretended to be a beggar to investigate the issue beginning in late 2005, the Outlook Weekly reported yesterday.

Cao’s report was handed to Premier Wen Jiabao in August, raising central government officials’ concerns.

Cao said he saw a little boy crouching on the ground to beg one day in November last year near the Shenzhen Gymnasium. When Cao tried to awake the boy to learn his story, a woman hiding nearby stopped him.

The woman told him the boy suffered from a brain disease and could not be awakened, asking Cao not to meddle in their affairs.

Cao soon found many begging children were unable to move or talk, and could only sleep on the ground.

For his investigation, he disguised himself as a beggar, carrying a wooden stick and a bowl for alms.

Most beggars haunting the downtown area came from central China’s Henan Province. Cao said he once stayed there and could speak Henan dialect, which helped him become an acquaintance of the beggars soon.

He visited a man, who was considered the richest beggar in Shenzhen. The man always controlled three to four sick or handicapped children, intimidating them into begging.

Cao said the man broke arms or legs of the children he had abducted to make them look miserable. The more miserable it looked, the more people would give to these children, the man believed.

When the children turned seriously ill, they often disappeared mysteriously and some new cruelly injured children would appear, Cao said.

He was told the man could earn 200,000 to 300,000 yuan a year, noting the Shenzhen Funeral Home cremated 286 abandoned dead children last year.

He once reported what he found in the investigation to authorities, but what he received most were uncaring responses, he said.