World Street Children News

DESTINATION RWANDA: PC Amber Thorne will visit Rwanda for a month in February and she is trying to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead

A POLICEWOMAN is swapping patrolling the streets of Waltham Forest for helping street children in Rwanda.

PC Amber Thorne, 24, who works at Walthamstow police station, is attempting to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead, which is based in the East African country.

It helps to improve the lives of homeless children and young girls forced into prostitution.

She is asking each Metropolitan Police officer to donate £1 so that she can meet her target and she thinks there are more than 30,000 police officers in London.

When she visits Rwanda, PC Thorne will teach street children how to play, cook and motivate themselves.

She said she was inspired to go to Rwanda because her friends Naomi and Mark Ogle set up the charity after meeting a Rwandan street child.

They decided to emigrate there and devote their lives to helping more street children.

"I have been given a giant hopscotch game to take with me and my friends have asked me to teach the children games like mother goose and hop scotch.

"Two of my friends were so inspired by what I’m doing they have decided to come with me", she added.

PC Thorne will go to Rwamagana, Rwanda, in February and will spend the entire month there before returning to Waltham Forest to patrol the borough’s streets.

She helped to organise an X-Factor for Rwanda event at SDA Central London Church, Crawford Place, near Edgware Road, on Saturday to raise funds.

l If you would like to make a donation to the cause or for more information, email PC Thorne on amber.c.thorne@met.police.uk.

Ensuring child rights By Md. Sazedul Islam Wed, 24 Jan 2007, 08:55:00

Nasima was brought up at her grandmother’s house along with four sisters when her mother died when she was very young. Her father remarried. Due to physical torture and abuse by her stepmother, she ran away from the house and came to Dhaka where she started working as a domestic help in two houses. But she could not bear the heavy load of works. She came to street and survived by picking waste paper.

She met the staff of Aparajeyo Bangladesh (AB), a NGO, which has street children’s club at Arambag in the capital. She was enrolled in the center and showed interest in her education and became an active member of the center. Due to her self-motivation and personal development, she was transferred to AB’s girls’ hostel.

Nasima, 15, now student of Class VIII, is a talented dancer and orator. She completed a beautician course on April 2005 through the assistance of ARISE (Appropriate Resources Improving Street Children’s Environment) which is a joint project of Ministry of Social Welfare and UNDP taken for ensuring the welfare of street children.

Currently, Nasima is working part-time as a peer educator in AB’s HIV/AIDS prevention programme and received a monthly salary of Tk. 2,000. She wants to work in a beauty parlor to gain experiences and have her own beauty parlor in the future.

Aparajeyo Bangladesh is one of the partner NGOs engaged in implementing the ARISE project. The story of Nasima is not an isolated one; there are many other children who fall to troubles. Children are the hopes and future of a nation, because development of future civilization depends on them. If a child’s survival, development and protection are at take, then the development of a country at large is threatened.

Children are wealth of a state. When children are so important in the life of a nation, she/he can be neither ignored nor neglected in the onward march of world civilization. But unfortunately they become labour at an early age when they should be free from anxiety and food, clothing and education.

Children have equal status with adults, as members of human race and their survival, development and active participation are crucial to the progress of our society. Some times, children are beaten up, trafficked to another country, forced to take up risky works without salary, sexually harassed and sold after abduction. Sometimes, they are discriminated on gender or racial causes.

They have rights to be saved from this injustice. Child domestic service is widespread practice in urban areas. Child domestic workers come from extremely poor families, many have been abandoned or orphaned, or come from single parent families.

The National Child Labour Survey, 2002-03 by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics conducted throughout the country, covered the child population aged 5-17 years living in the households. The estimated number of children in this age category is over 4.23 crore. According to National Child Labour Survey, of total child population in the 5-17 age group, 74.23 lakh were engaged in economic activity in 2002-03. Out of the working children, about 54,71,000 were boys and 19,52,000 girls.

The survey report said there are 40.67 lakh children who neither go to school and nor engage in any works. Working children were involved in 300 types of work and of these, 49 are injurious to their physical and mental welfare. Of the total working children in Bangladesh, 7.7 percent were engaged in hazardous works in Bangladesh.

According to ILO, children are employed in wide range of manufacturing process and the results namely lost childhood, foregone education and special susceptibility to the hazards of the work, are same for all. The children are the mainstays of a nation, keeping this mind; the government has taken up a number of activities that have direct bearing upon the children.

The Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC) is a powerful tool and framework to help protect the lives and promote the development of children around the world.

Bangladesh government, which is aware of the rights of its future citizen, ratified the CRC and participated at the World Summit for Children in September 1990 to launch the CRC. Hence, the observance of Child Rights Week from Sept 29 to Oct 5 is very significant in this regard.

The government committed to CRC is giving maintenance of law and order top priority and in 2000 passed ‘Supervision of Violence Against Women and Children Act’. The Social Welfare Ministry has been assigned with the key role of overseeing all activities relating to children. The Ministries of Women, Health and Family Planning, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Religious, LGRD, and Foreign have been brought together in the inter ministerial committee on the rights of children.

The Labour and Manpower Ministry is effectively enforcing the existing children’s Act which protect children from a number of exploitations and physical strains at work place. A labour law commission has been set up to modify the existing laws. Besides, government has taken up a scheme for the distressed children giving them training and education in 400 thanas of the country.

Bangladesh have enacted an important law protecting the interests of the children and their well being named ‘The Children Act-1974′. There are some other laws touching the interest and development of faculty of children named Bangladesh Boys Scout Act, Girls Guide Act and Shishu Academy Act.

Since the ratification of the Convention in 1991, Bangladesh has taken up some important steps for increasing awareness of the rights of the children. National Children’s day beginning in 1992 now turned into a Child Rights Week providing a valuable platform for raising awareness of child rights among children and population in general. The Islamic Foundation has disseminated information on the rights of children to Imams throughout the country.

Bangladesh have adhered to numerous regional and international declarations concerning children. A National Children Policy was adopted in December 1994. It lists the main objectives about the rights of child and calls for creation of a National Council for Children comprising relevant government ministries, agencies, individuals and NGO representatives.

Its functions include making policy on the welfare of the children and working for the adoption of new laws where necessary. National Plan of Action (1997-2002) was undertaken for development of children. Women and Children Affairs Ministry, UNICEF and other NGOs are jointly working on way to taking up another 2002-2007 National Plan of Action for creating a child friendly environment across the country.

Birth registration of children has already been introduced and various steps taken up to ensure that no child fall victim to discrimination. Government has declared the 2001-2010 as Child Rights Decade to raise awareness about child rights among the people. Shishu Academy was formed and the Women Ministry was turned into Women and Children Affairs Ministry in 1994.

A programme named ‘Natun Kuri’ was launched on Television for children aimed at encouraging their talent. The government made primary education compulsory and giving cash incentive to parents of the children to ensure less drop out. The government committed to stop repression on children has established a safe custody to provide security for children who are sent to jail.

Bangladesh government has taken up Appropriate Resources for Improving Street Children’s Environment (ARISE) project to promote and protect the rights of the children. ARISE envisions a favourable environment congenial to the health growth and empowerment of the street children.

Some 55,000 street children of country’s six divisional cities have been benefited so far in the ARISE, the first government initiative to address and resolve the street children phenomenon. It is not possible for government alone to ensure the development for children. Everybody, including parents, should come forward for the welfare of the children.

(PID-UNICEF Feature)

Rules for rose sellers approved
City to require $7 fee, weeklong training
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

BY KYLE STOCK

Children who sell palmetto fronds twisted into the shape of roses on Charleston streets would have to attend a one-week training seminar and buy a $7 permit under an ordinance approved by City Council on Tuesday.

The measure also would preclude panhandling without a license and forbid street vendors from operating in the most crowded sections of the peninsula.

Mayor Joe Riley said complaints about the young vendors, typically poor black children, trespassing and harassing tourists presented "an interesting challenge and a wonderful opportunity." City economic development officials spent about a year drafting the rules, which received preliminary approval.

"We’ve discovered how to make this a very positive, beneficial experience for the kids," Riley said. "They’re clever. They’ve got moxie, and we all grew up with people like that who are very successful."

The ordinance requires that rose peddlers attend a weeklong class administered by YEScarolina, a nonprofit started to teach business skills to young people. The sessions cost $15 and are open to 20 youths between ages 9 and 16 at a time. Would-be rose peddlers also will have to buy a $7 permit to sell wares on the streets and might be required to buy a business license, depending on how much they expect to sell.

The regulation forbids the young entrepreneurs from selling their wares before 8 a.m., during school hours and after 8 p.m. It also would require palm-frond crafters to stay in constant motion when selling the flowers. Although the ordinance approved Tuesday calls for a criminal records check for would-be vendors, city attorneys pledged to strike that languagebefore City Council considers the measure for final approval.

Critics of the rose-peddling regulation said the added level of bureaucracy would dissuade some of the city’s most at-risk youth from pursuing an honest dollar. Robert David Ross, a 56-year-old downtown resident, said that he encourages the craft and teaches young salesmen how to harvest palm fronds in his yard without hurting the trees. Ross said he thinks the rules approved Tuesday were heavy-handed.

"What they’re saying is these kids are criminals," he said. "I never heard them say that when the little white kids got their lemonade stands."

The city has a long history of efforts to control similar types of commerce. In the 1930s and ’40s, Charleston tried to banish flower vendors from the post office on Broad Street, the same spot where basket makers do business now. After a public outcry, officials eventually painted a line that the flower vendors were not permitted to cross in pursuit of customers.

City officials, downtown residents and peninsula businesses, however, have said the peddlers often litter sidewalks with palm fronds, trespass and threaten potential customers.

Elizabeth Beaudry, a Summerville resident who grew up on James Island, spoke in favor of the regulations.

"I tried to get into M. Dumas and I had about 10 of them all over me like leeches trying to get me to buy something," Beaudry recounted. "I think, if I was a tourist, what would I think about this city?"

Councilman Wendell Gilliard cast the sole vote against the proposal. Gilliard said the city should not regulate the commerce but rather encourage the private sector and nonprofit groups to mentor the kids.

Poverty is one of the issues up for discussion at the forum

Dozens of street children have invaded a five-star hotel food tent and feasted on meals meant for sale at the World Social Forum in Kenya’s capital.

The hungry urchins were joined by other participants who complained that the food was too expensive at the annual anti-capitalist get together.

The police, caught unawares, were unable to stop the free-for-all that saw the food containers swept clean.

The gathering in Nairobi is discussing social problems, including poverty.

A plate of food at the tent being operated by the prestigious Windsor Hotel was selling for $7 in a country where many live on less than $2 a day.

‘Hawkers allowed’

The children, who had been begging for food, launched the raid after being told they would have to pay for the food.

We are now not charging anybody, the event is free so that many people can participate Boniface Beti World Social Forum organiser

The hotel management declined to comment on the incident.

Two days ago, World Social Forum organisers were forced to waive entry fees for participants after Nairobi slum dwellers staged a demonstration against the charges.

Participants were originally being asked to pay a 500 Kenyan shillings ($7) accreditation fee.

"We are now not charging anybody, the event is free so that many people can participate," Boniface Beti, the event’s media officer, told the BBC.

Mr Beti also said hawkers had recently been allowed in to sell cheap food to participants as up until a few days ago five-star catering firms had dominated business.

Tens of thousands of people are attending the World Social Forum, which is being held at the same time as the World Economic Forum - hosted in the Swiss town of Davos.

At Davos, the world’s largest corporations are discussing business and hammering out trade deals, while the Kenyan event is addressing a wide spectrum of the world’s social problems - including poverty.

Rwanda: Caritas Introduces Project for Former Street Children

The New Times (Kigali)

January 24, 2007
Posted to the web January 25, 2007

James Tasamba
Musanze

Caritas, an international Catholic aid organization in Ruhengeri dioceses has added a new artisan project in its programmes to benefit over 300 former street children.

Speaking at the official launch of the project, January 18, in Musanze District, the District official in charge of cooperatives, Salongo Nsolo who represented the mayor, asked the children to embrace the project as a way through which they can fight poverty and improve their living standards.

"This is a developmental idea which you should take seriously as it will help improve your financial status and lead to the economic development of the district," Nsoro told the children.

Reaffirming the district’s commitment to help associations which help children, Nsolo commended Caritas for transforming the children into responsible citizens. "The district will support such projects which are in line with the government plan of making all children live a descent life," he pledged

Dotta Mirco, an Italian national and architect of the project said the project was out of the realization to help preserve Rwandan culture and fetch money through sale of products to tourists visiting the Volcano National Park.

Angela Mukamusoni of Caritas, said they started a center for reintegration of former street children in 1997; under which the children are taught different skills including carpentry, welding, tailoring, hairdressing, and motor mechanics before they get reintegrated with their families. A total of 225 children have so far been trained and given work tools before being reintegrated to normal life.

Journeying into dark lives of India’s street kids
By Nayanima Basu, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, Jan 22 (IANS) Shekhar Saini ran away from his village in Bihar because he could not bear the extreme poverty his family was facing. In the hope of making it big in the city, he found his new home on the ever-teeming platform of the New Delhi railway station.

Today Saini, 21, is a role model in his village. This is not because he left his home in his teens, but because he is giving back to the unlikely community of street children. He works as a tourist guide, taking inquisitive tourists, mostly Western backpackers, through the busy and choking railway platforms to give them a first-hand experience of how street kids beside the railway tracks live.

Saini’s fellow colleague, another tourist guide Javed Khan, also a runaway, came to Delhi to see the grand historical monuments at the age of nine. He ended up in a dry sewer, got stabbed and was taken to gang leaders who wanted to train him to pick pockets.

Both Saini and Khan got saved and became what they are today as suave tourists guides because they got a shelter home in the Salaam Baalak Trust, a Delhi-based NGO.

The trust conducts a tour for Rs.200 (about $5) per head almost five times a week to offer a sneak peek into the inconspicuous lives of these street kids who otherwise don’t get noticed.

These poor kids flee their homes for a better life in the huge metros and get gobbled up in the narrow by-lanes, or stinking sewers of the railway stations or bus-stops which are, according to one estimate, home to some 3,000-odd poor young runaways.

They trade leftover drinking water bottles to watch the new movie that comes in the nearby Sheila movie theatre on Fridays. One uncrushed bottle fetches them up to Rs.2, whereas a crushed bottle brings a paltry 50 paise.

Sometimes they also pick up leftover fruits from trains and sell them to the juice-sellers in the platform and earn money.

"I always used to hear how child labour has become prevalent in India and everyone is so complacent about it. But after seeing what they go through so closely, I am absolutely appalled," Elizabeth, 53, a tourist, who has come from Denmark to visit her son who works in Delhi, told IANS, while shaking hands with the kids who queued up to shake hands with her.

The children, according to Saini, often fall prey to gang leaders who sometimes sexually assault them or get them into drug addiction. If by chance they escape from the clutches of gang leaders, they are not spared by the railway police who beat them without any reason.

"All this hype about double-digit GDP (gross domestic product) is good, but I am sure that is not going to trickle down to these poor kids," Kristian Nielsen, an intern with the Danish embassy, said while taking photographs of the kids studying maths on a dilapidated roof-top of a shelter home run by the trust.

The children often sleep in the gaps between the overpass and the roofs of the platforms where they play cards during leisure time.

"Once one of my friends had a fight with another boy while they were playing cards and he threw away the cards in anger. The other friend of mine in an effort to collect the cards got electrocuted because of the overhead wires," Saini narrated with pain writ large in his big dreamy eyes.

For girls the situation is much worse, Saini says, as they often fall into the hands of pimps who sell them at throwaway prices in the G.B. Road area, notorious for its seedy red-light district.

Saini earns Rs.2,500 ($56) a month, which he says is "not enough" to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Saini has done many plays in theatres and is a high-ranking student at the National School of Drama.

Also a part-time dancer, Saini speaks fluent English sprinkled with American accented words for the foreign tourists so that he can get them to donate funds for the trust.

"Today my parents are proud of me because they can see what I have become. I want all such kids who run away from their homes and poverty to turn out like me," stated Saini with a sense of pride as he manages his "Shah Rukh Khan-like" hairstyle.

Javed Khan, now completing his graduation from Delhi University, wants to work with the UN as a social worker and so intends to do a masters in social work after this.

"There are more than 200,000 children in Delhi who run away from their homes and live in such shelters," says Praveen Nair, co-founder, Salaam Baalak Trust, who started this organisation after her daughter Mira Nair, a celebrated filmmaker, got international acclaim for "Salaam Bombay" - a movie on street kids.

"Fifty percent of funding comes from international agencies and the government. But for the rest of the funding, we have to struggle a lot," Nair told IANS.

"In our shelter homes we get 300-400 children a month, some of whom we repatriate but for others we need to take care," Nair added.

Not every kid is as lucky. But as Saini’s favourite line goes, "Let’s move on from here."

Kids In The Dark
One of the biggest problems in the streets of Kathmandu…

Bruce Peru Educating Street Kids
We have designed and proved a method for getting the 20% of Latin American children not in school: EDUCATED.
http://bruceperu.org/

Nigeria: Fragments - Who Are Street Kids in Nigeria?
Daily Trust (Abuja)

OPINION
January 19, 2007

Safiya I. Dantiye

I have read a lot on children that that have no parents and are not in anybody’s care, like the orphanage in some African countries. In other words these children sleep and live in the streets, so they are called street kids. But I find it hard to connect the problem with Nigeria, and especially my State, which is Kano, until a year ago when I entered a public transport to travel to Kano and a co passenger who was going there for the first time asked some questions about Kano and revealed that he was working with an NGO and that his mission was to go and contact some people about building a house, school and other facilities for the street kids of Kano.And the school of course is boarding school.

I told him I didn’t know about street kids in Kano, despite it being my state. Then he mentioned the almajirai!

I explained to him that as far as I was concerned the almarai were not street kids since their parents entrusted them to the Mallams to learn the Qur’an, and that they sleep in their schools or in the halls of the neighboring houses. In essence their parents know where they are and some give them money and some essential items to take to school.

Then another co passenger talked about street kids in Lagos that sleep under the bridge and the person that wanted to ‘rescue’ street kids in Kano said he thought the almajirai were also like that.

Anyway, it is really about the street kids in Lagos that I want to talk about. During Christmas some street kids were interviewed on television about in Lagos on how to spend Christmas. A cheeky boy of about 11 years old cheerfully said." I don’t have a father and a mother, so I will not celebrate Christmas."

The boy’s behaviour made me doubt the authenticity of his claim of being an orphan. If he were, I don’t think he would be so happy in saying it, as if it doesn’t really matter whether he has parents or not, which is abnormal. Orphans are melancholy and depressed, even when the pain of the initial loss had subsided, any time the orphan talks about his/her pathetic condition he/she will say it in a lamentable way, may be with a tear- filled eyes.

If the boy is indeed an orphan, I don’t think he could not have anybody to take care of him among his mother’s and father’s relatives, so maybe such children, majority of which I suspect to be boys, just run away from their homes and go to the cities. In cities such as Lagos, they sleep under the bridge and scavenge to live. From there some will graduate into taking drugs and become thieves, while their parents might have looked for them for years and even gave up hope, thinking that they are dead, since they will assume that they were abducted or ’stolen’ in the first place.

Thereafter the issue of so called ‘parentless’ children roaming towns with nobody in the world to take care of them should be looked at critically, some may just prepare to become rascals and live in the streets. Then if an opportunity presents itself they will say they are orphans with nobody to look after them.

This also indicates the nonchalant attitude of the authorities towards the well being of the citizens. A government that is concerned should gather those children, try to find their parents, and if not found, they should be put under the custody of the government. Or do whatever it can to prevent the children from roaming the streets where they will learn all sorts of vices that they will unleash on the society when they grow up.

Bruce Peru 2006
Here in Peru, 26% of school age children are not in school. We and our volunteers have found a way to recruit these children, educate them to make up for all the years they have missed. Prepare them to pass the entrance examinations for the grades they belong in. We help pay their registration fees, uniforms, class materials. Then we support them in school for two years: until they are well launched as young people becoming educated. It works. Visit the BrucePeru website to find out more about how you can participate: http://www.bruceperu.org/