Children on an empty stomach on empty streets

KARACHI: At a time when all the commerce in Karachi is facing a shutdown and there is an acute shortage of basic necessities in the city like food and fuel, no one is finding the going tougher than the street-children of Karachi.
“I have not had a single bite to eat since yesterday morning as I was unable to find anything,” said nineteen-year-old Sajid, whose sustenance comes from the charity given at the shrines and different hotels of Karachi. Sajid was born in Multan. He has four sisters and three brothers. His father was a drug addict who regularly beat his wife and children compelling Sajid to run away from home. He first went to Sukkur but soon found himself living on the streets of Karachi, the commerce capital of Pakistan.
According to the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), there are 25,000 homeless children living on the streets of Karachi.
“These children are either orphans and have no one to look after them or they have fled from their homes because of unbearable living conditions,” SPARC regional manager Akhtar Baloch told Daily Times.
He said these children live near shrines, religious places, and areas with a large number of food shops as they rely on charity. Since most of the hotels have been closed for the last four days and there has been no one visiting the shrines, the street children have been hit hard.
“I hangout with my friends on a small off-street of Burns Road, the food street of Karachi. There are six hotels there where hundreds of the people dine daily and some of them buy us food which last us the whole day,” said Sajid.
Sajid was also unaware of what really happened that caused Karachi to become deserted all of a sudden. He has been moving from place to place looking for some activity (and food), but has had little luck yet.
“After finding the bazaars and shops closed, we (Sajid and his friends) moved to where the big tower [Empress Market tower] is located, but strangely it was as deserted as the rest of the city,” said Sajid.
The Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine, where in normal days you can get food round-the-clock, also proved a disappointment for Sajid and his friends and they have been forced to look in the garbage for edible items.

We can see lots of street kids basically homeless children roaming in our city. These kids stay in groups. They come to city in search of better life as most of them come from remote areas of Nepal. The places from where they come have less opportunity. The other reason they come to city is because they are driven out form their house by their step mother or some other family related problems. After they reach the city many try to get work, the lucky ones get jobs at tea shops as a helper, as bus or tempo or micro bus conductors and luckier one are kept as a house workers and helpers.

What about the unlucky ones?

The unlucky ones are forced to sleep on the street, run towards dumping site to collect plastic, glass bottles which they collect and sale to scrap shop to earn some money and kill their hunger. They are not always lucky enough to make money out of such dumps to kill their hunger. They are forced to beg or get into pick pocketing. Sometimes, they fight among each other and steal friends’ money but still they are seen together walking around corners of Kathmandu’s streets. We can even see them begging, especially with the tourist as they know most of Nepalese people won’t give them a single paisa.

Now-a-days, we can see that these street kids have developed a new kind of addiction. Their addiction is towards the odor that comes from some adhesive which are mostly used in making leather shoes. In Nepal they are commonly known as “Dendrite” by the name of the company that produces them.

These adhesive are synthetic rubber which is a combination of Aromatic and Aliphatic Solvent with a strong odor. They are highly flammable too.

Boys with adhesive in miniral water bottle and a plastic bag

I met few such kids and questioned them why they want to take such smell of adhesive. They simply replied me that it gives them pleasure. They get stoned with suck odor; they get relief from their hunger, pain and other unpleasant things they come across in their daily life.I don’t know what kind of pleasure they get from such odor of adhesive nor do I have any idea what impact such odor will create in their health.

One question that comes in my mind is who taught them to take such odor and get pleasure or get stoned? How did they learn all about such addiction?

Do you think they are worried about their future?

These street kids are also part of our society; they don’t have good guidance of their parents or elders that is why they are forced to live such a poor very low standard life. What I think is every person is born with his/her own specialty with which he/she can contribute something good for this society. So it will be our great contribution to the society if we can help these kids to get rid of such bad habits, give them proper guidance and some formal vocational training or even if they are interested to study then good education to them so that they can work and earn on their own with their heads up. I am sure they have some potential to contribute to the society and help in the progress of nation.

Updated on December 27, 2007

Fact Sheet on Glue Sniffing Among Street Children in Nepal 

• According to CWIN estimation there are 5000 street children in Nepal and around 400 - 600 are based in the Kathmandu Valley.
• CWIN Research on Alcohol and Drug Use among Street Children in Nepal, 2001 has shown that between 25 and 90 per cent of street children use substance of one kind or other.
• Glue sniffing is relatively new trend in Nepal. It is fast becoming an addiction among street children in Kathmandu. The current prevalent of glue sniffing is 51.7% among street children in the Kathmandu Valley. 19.7% have started using glue two years ago, 34.4 % started a year ago and 27.9% started just few months back.
• Glue sniffing is taken as a ‘debut’ drug by street children. Mostly street children begin drug-taking by glue sniffing and end up on other, more hard-core, drugs.
• Street children, who do not even smoke or drink alcohol often sniff glue.
• In general, the main short-term effects reported by the responding children were hallucinations. Its ill effects have resulted in problematic behavior, self-destruction due to hallucinations and fighting amongst friends.
• The reasons given by the users for sniffing were low self-esteem, an inferiority complex and having enough pocket money to buy this substance.
• Children also use glue because it is cheap and easily available.
• Most of the harmful effects of Glue Sniffing are found to be related to the brain and the Nervous System. 63.9 % have reported one or other kind of illness as long term effects of glue sniffing.
• Even among non-users almost all the children knew about glue sniffing. In the group of non-users a majority (85%) have seen their friends sniffing glue.
• Glue sniffing can be termed as ‘group activity’ among street children. 95.1% children use glue with friends. 77% use glue in peer influence and 60.7% children sniff glue daily.

(Source: CWIN Survey on Glue Sniffing Among Street Children in the Kathmandu Valley, 2002)

Digital Diary: Nigerian street children tell their stories of life without security

© UNICEF Nigeria/2007/Tayo

Isaiah, 15, during the recording of ‘Voices from the Street’, a UNICEF-supported Radio Nigeria programme produced by children living in the streets in Lagos.

By Christine Jaulmes

NEW YORK, USA, 26 December 2007 – Isaiah has spent 5 of his 15 years living on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, the second largest city of Africa. Like hundreds of other children, he spends his days and nights in this sprawling metropolis trying to fend for himself. “It is not easy living on the street but what can I do?” asks Isaiah, one of 25 children who have told their stories on Nigerian national radio through a UNICEF-supported project. “I have two sisters that I have not seen in five years, I have smoked Indian hemp like other boys of my age, got beaten by bigger boys, robbed of my money, took my bath in the canal and slept under the bridge,” Isaiah says in one broadcast. “The good thing is that I am alive!” Given the opportunity to go to school, Isaiah says he would like to become a lawyer. “I want to be defending people,” he explains.

‘Voices from the Street’ The UNICEF-supported Child-to-Child Network, a non-governmental organization, worked with Radio Nigeria to train children in radio production so they could tell their own stories. The resulting series, ‘Voices from the Street’, was broadcast to more than 60 million listeners.

© UNICEF Nigeria/2007/Tayo

Earning $5 to $6 a day as a bus conductor, Isaiah lives on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

Some of the children in the series tell of escapes from unhappy homes, while others recall travelling to the city in search of adventure. They end up selling water packaged in plastic bags or washing the windshields of vehicles in heavy traffic. Isaiah works as a ‘bus conductor’ – collecting fares from passengers who squeeze onto the yellow commercial buses of Lagos. He earns $5 to $6 a day.

At the age of 10, Isaiah left his home in Ogun State. A friend, who turned out to be a child-labour recruiter, invited him to Lagos along with 11 other boys. “We left home without telling any of our parents,’ Isaiah says. Survival on the streets The recruiter paid the boys’ bus fare to Lagos. Then he took the boys to the city’s biggest market and motor park “to sell them,” according to Isaiah. “The more people he brings, the higher his ‘rank’ goes and the more money he gets paid,” Isaiah adds. “I was eventually sold to one man for a fee of 5,000 Naira [about $40]. The man took me to a place I do not know; my duty there was to be a housekeeper.” Isaiah decided to run away. He met up with other street children who showed him how to survive on his own. “I started to sleep under the bridge or inside any of the buses parked under the bridge,” he says. “If mosquitoes are too many, I sleep inside the boot of the vehicles.” ‘I am a big man now’

Getting the children to tell their stories was a challenge, says ‘Voices from the Street’ producer Funke Treasure Durudola. When the most taciturn of the boys finally opened up, she adds, it was the high point of her 12-year broadcasting career. “You have to be empathetic. Connect with them first and they must connect with you, too, before you can get their story,” says Ms. Durudola. UNICEF and the Child-to-Child Network also offered to help reunite the children with their families, or to find other rehabilitation possibilities. Isaiah hopes his family can hear his story on the radio. “I pray that the people of my place will listen,” he says. “They will hear that I am still alive and that I am a big man now.”

Audio

Two Nigerian children, Damilola and Isaiah, tell their stories of life on the streets of Lagos.
AUDIOlisten

Christmas sales bring cheer to street kids

Azera Rahman, Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, December 24, 2007
First Published: 13:10 IST(24/12/2007)
Last Updated: 13:20 IST(24/12/2007)

In the grey winter mornings, six-year-old Chottu smiles as he trots along one of the capital’s roads with a bunch of red Santa caps under his arms. He has no clue what Christmas is. But he does know that he makes an extra buck at this time, bringing cheer to his family.

Chottu is just one of the hundreds of children on the Indian capital’s roads who, like elsewhere, sell various items, from newspapers and magazines to balloons, flowers and other products to commuters.

Pleading and begging, more often than not their faces are clouded with disappointment as people roll up the car windows or shoo them away as they try to sell their products.

But not during Christmas.

"Since the past three-four days, I haven’t had to work too hard to sell my caps. They are readily bought by people," Chottu told IANS, a little hesitant, a little shy.

So what does Christmas mean to him and his family?

"Hmm? At this time of the year generally the sales go up, so I bring more money back home…and we - my mother, I and my baby sister - all are happy," he said.

According to Kailash Satyarthi, chairperson of the Bachpan Bachao Aandolan (BBA), an NGO that works for the benefit of children, there are nearly 5,000 street kids involved in the selling of Christmas decorations.

Sanjida, heavily pregnant and a young mother of two, similarly is really happy with the sales. "I have sold 50 such caps in two days," she smiled, sitting on the pavement with her kids in south Delhi’s RK Puram area.

"I get these caps from Sadar Bazar, which is a wholesale market, near Connaught Place. I sell them at Rs 25," she said, folding the last cap into a polythene packet.

"Otherwise, I sell red roses, which I buy from the early morning flower market in Connaught Place itself. Although I am selling flowers too, the rapid sale of caps has lightened the load of earning my daily bread," she said even as a huge bunch of flowers lay beside her.

Although these items - the red Santa Claus caps or the Santa Claus mask - are easily available in the market, people prefer buying them from the street kids instead.

"Call it the festive mood or whatever, but when celebrations are around the corner you like to see happy faces around. You want to make people happy. That’s why these days when a street kid approaches me with a red cap I simply buy it," said Rajesh Kumar, a teacher.

"In any case my kids would buy it from the market…why not make these kids happy as well by buying their stuff?"

As the mood is upbeat, with Christmas and then the New Year round the corner, people tend to give away and splurge a little.

"The other day I was returning from a get-together in an auto when at the red light a kid came by, begging me to buy his balloons. Somehow I was so moved at the sight of his torn clothes that I bought the entire bunch of balloons," said Sharda Nath, a college student.

"That smile on his face…it was adorable. He was obviously not expecting it! I then gifted those balloons to my friend. It just made me happy seeing the kid and then my friend thrilled."

Like on Christmas, the sale of miniature flags on Independence Day or flowers on Valentine’s Day also shoots up.

"I don’t know what ‘Krismas’ (Christmas) is or who Santa is but he must be a good man. Whenever he comes, he brings smiles to my home," said Chutki, a smiling eight-year-old with Santa Claus masks tucked under her arm.

Christmas brings cheer to street children in Guwahati
From our ANI Correspondent

Guwahati, Dec 22: Christmas season brought cheer to street children in Guwahati as social activists gave them food, clothes and enjoyment.
    
Preety Sangma, a social activist said the aim of the event was to bring some sunshine in an otherwise gloomy existence of the neglected children.

"We thought it will be good gesture for these children so that we can give them love. They are unwanted and unprivileged. So, we thought like we can give the love of Jesus to them," said Preety.

The children said they thoroughly enjoyed the outing.

"People treated us so well. We played, joked really enjoyed it," said Prem Darjee, a child.

The venue was Christ Church at Panbazar in Guwahati. Established in 1844, Christ Church is the oldest in north eastern India.

Most of the children, living in nearby slums, eke out a living as rag pickers.

Childhood marred with sex and drugs
Kishalay Bhattacharjee
Saturday, December 22, 2007 (Dimpaur)
Street children in the north-east are trapped in a vicious circle of substance and sexual abuse. This street culture drives them to a life of theft.

AB’s (name protected) home are the streets of Dimapur, where he’s spent all his 17 years. Except the time he went to jail but that’s not his concern right now.

He is back and trying to fit back to the only life he has had, drugs, theft and unsafe sex.

‘’I live on the footpath, pick up scrap, take dendrite and drugs. We were told about HIV, through the injections that we take we know that HIV can be transmitted. Then I went to jail for drugs and theft, we were also told about condom use. Mom left and dad married someone else so he left. I am here in Dimpaur.'’

A teenage girl is part of Bablu’s gang and a sex worker. For social workers Wapangla and Katia counselling these children is a near-impossible task.

Wapangla and Katia who work with street children said, ‘’Its very difficult to reach out to them because they were abandoned by their families. Their father-mother were drug addicts, drugs have been their strength so it’s very difficult to counsel them. Only in one or two we have seen a change.'’

CD (name protected) is one of the lucky few who’s moved to rehabilitation after spending seven years on the streets. We met him at a pre-Christmas party hosted by his friends where they reminisced about old times.

Some children said, ‘’We would roam around the street steal and do drugs, that was a different life.'’

Another kid, EF (name protected) has been 20 times to jail in his short life. There are many others like him. Christmas is the only day in the year when they have something to celebrate.

GH a 5-yr-old was molested a few weeks ago and others like her live through such indignities everyday.

Ela’s NGO, Prodigal Home was the only refuge in Nagaland but even this might soon close.

K Ela the Director for Prodigal Home said, ‘’We know that they are very vulnerable to be exploited sexually. They are vulnerable to drug abuse, they are vulnerable to sex work because we have during our interaction with the children in the past few years we have come across girls who are only 13- 14 years but are already into sex work.'’

‘’Even boys of the same age indulge in sex. We have come across cases where we have tested children of 14-15 years and they are not injecting drug users but they are infected. So they are very much vulnerable,'’ he said.

Ela said that, ‘’They are vulnerable they have no access to any kind of information because they don’t go to school, they don’t go to any other centre where they can get any access to education, plus they don’t have access to health care system.'’

Hindrances

Policy makers haven’t yet woken up to the plight of these children, so there have been no studies in the state.

In Dimapur alone two children were found to be HIV positive in a recent test by an NGO. They number of steet children has increased tremendously in past four years.

International surveys show 50 per cent of all new HIV infections occur in the 15-24-yr-old age group.

Ela said, ‘’NACO says let it be the responsibility of the social welfare department. Social welfare says that this is not their programme, so we really do not know what to do.'’

NGOs are also handicapped in their efforts by the law since children can’t be counselled or tested unless accompanied by legal guardians. These children have none.

Dr Vizolie Suokhrie of National Rural Health Mission said, ‘’Street Children are a very vulnerable group. In Nagaland you also have school dropouts. What we need here is a composite programme where we take care of CSWs, IDUs, MSMs and identifying this group through this project.'’

He said, ‘’Unfortunately this has been dropped but we can’t ignore this group anymore.'’

Children have initiated spreading awareness themselves by staging a play on their pre-christmas party on HIV /AIDS.

But in the absence of policies to support street children and prevent spread of HIV/AIDS.'’

Independent Appeal: Bringing hope to abused children from the streets

By Andrew Gumbel in Puebla, Mexico

Published: 21 December 2007

Street children get a new life with Juconi, supported by The Independent Christmas Appeal

When the boy known as Pedro Jonathan was just eight years old, he ran away from the house he shared with his mother and stepfather in Mexico City. For a while he lived on the street, then he hopped on a bus in the hope of finding a better life elsewhere.

Pedro Jonathan had been a victim of serial abandonments – first by his father, who never participated in his life at all, then by his mother, who took off with her new man and left him in the care of his grandmother in Acapulco, and finally by the grandmother, who found him a burden and sent him back to his mother in the big city.

Pedro Jonathan doesn’t like to talk about what happened in the final few months before he ran away, but it clearly had to do with the overbearing authoritarianism of his stepfather and the sense that nobody really wanted him. Nobody took the trouble to send him to school regularly, and he never finished his first year of primary education.

Soon after he hopped on that bus, to a small provincial town called Acatlan, his young life hit rock bottom. The family he hoped would take care of him couldn’t cope with him either. A government agency took him to a shelter in Puebla, south-east of Mexico City, where he soon became involved in a nasty fight and was sent to a juvenile detention centre.

That was where he was found by Juconi, a charity specialising in rehabilitating street children which is funded by the International Children’s Trust and is one of the three charities being supported in this year’s Independent Christmas Appeal. They took him into their residential centre, gave him clothes and a bunk bed, and embarked on a painfully long process of education and therapy – essentially, taking on the multiple roles of educator, parent, psychologist and occupational therapist.

Pedro Jonathan is now 16, and the "impulsive, explosive" child of a few years ago has become much calmer. Since the beginning of the year, he has been enrolled in a public secondary school, where he enjoys playing the trumpet and has every intention of graduating in two years. He still lives in a residence run by Juconi and maintains close contact with his educators.

Ask him about any painful personal subject and his eyes will go just a little blank and his head will point down as he gives a perfunctory answer, but the happy fact is that he now has a shot at a functional sort of life where, eight years ago, he had next to none.

Juconi – short for Junto con las niñas y los niños or Together with the girls and boys – has been helping children like Pedro Jonathan for the past 18 years and pioneering techniques for rehabilitating children from the worst, most abusive backgrounds. Juconi finds many with untreated second-degree burns, or whip marks where they were beaten with electrical cord, or evidence that they were trussed and caged like animals, or appalling histories of sexual abuse.

Puebla takes in about 350 street children each year, many of whom have severed all ties with their closest relatives.

Some, like Pedro Jonathan, were fending for themselves on the streets. Others might have had a meagre living washing car windows at traffic lights, or doing fire-eating acts on street corners. Less vulnerable children, who work in and around Puebla’s main food market where their mothers have jobs, go to a drop-in centre Juconi runs near the market, and sleep at home. What they have in common is not so much poverty – although that is a common theme – as long, inter-generational histories of family violence.

At Juconi House, where Pedro Jonathan lived for close to five years, routine and order are the watchword. The children are responsible for keeping their clothes washed and tidy and spend the day shuttling between basic literacy and numeracy classes, therapy sessions, sports, practical activities and group meetings. Every child is given three sets of clothes and earn more as they gain the educators’ trust.

The attractive house, a two-storey structure built around an internal courtyard with blue and white tiles and red brick, is spotlessly clean.

Juconi’s Puebla operation’s director Alison Lane said: "We’ve deliberately created an organised, predictable environment, in contrast to the chaos of living in the streets."

Juconi has developed ways for the children – and family members who want to be involved – to express their feelings. Everyone rates themselves on a "mood thermometer" where zero means perfect happiness and 10 means sad and angry enough to burst. Those who feel overwhelmed are encouraged to work on a punch bag, use a ball in the playground or listen to music. The content of individual therapy sessions is determined entirely by the children. At some point in the process, every child will rebel – usually the sign of a turning point as rebellion is seen as an important step towards full engagement. Juconi tracks its graduates for 10 years. Ms Lane said: "We have an 80 per cent success rate which means 80 per cent of kids are off the streets and have their family around them once more."

10,000 street children rejoin families in DR Congo

Some 10,000 street children living in Kinshasa are set to return to their families, the coordinator of the network of educators of street children and youths (REEJER), Mr. Remy Mafu, said here Thursday.

According to the REEJER, 14,000 children currently live on the streets of Kinshasa.

Mr. Mafu said that in the spirit of Christmas, residents of Kinshasa as well as the country’s political authorities should rise to the challenge posed by street children.

Child Abuse Horror

From: hullfreedomtrail
Added: 20/12/07
In Freetown, Sierra Leone, over 2000 children are living in the streets. They literally scratch a living on rubbish dumps or get involved in robberies, drugs and prostitution. Organisations like the St.George Foundation (www.adecentlife.org) are busy rescuing these kids.

Beatles’ haven to house Delhi’s street kids?
rediff Entertainment Bureau

Back in the late 1960s, before Bollywood tunes and curry shops entrenched themselves in the UK, India was still something of a novelty. It was then that the West’s greatest band — the Beatles — travelled to India in search of something all their money and fame couldn’t buy: peace of mind

Their spiritual journey was supposed to culiminate in an extended stay at an ashram, where they would study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who is generally recognised as the founder of Transcendental Meditation.

There, the iconic band incorporated Indian techniques and influences, composing nearly fifty songs on those hallowed grounds, including While my Guitar Gently Weeps and Revolution.

Sadly, the government-owned ashram has fallen into disuse.

Today, it’s both rundown and gutted, by combination of nature’s ceaseless march and the greedy hands of desecrating robbers.

But now, for the first time in a long time, there’s hope.

According the Washington Post, Maggie O’Hara, a Canadian voice actress best known for her role in X-men: Evolution, has conjured up a plan that would breathe life back into neglected campus.

Her vision: the ashram will become a home and school for over 2,000 street children from New Delhi. She also plans to open a job training and rehabilitation center for abused, marginalised women.

The campus has been unihabited for over a decade, as those who oversaw the ashram abandoned it twelve years ago.