About Us > Who We Serve > Street Children

Street Children

The horror of being a child living in the streets is being experienced throughout the world.  Children orphaned with no family member to care for them, children fleeing from abuse, children searching for some way to survive - this is the case for some estimated 100 - 150 million children.  They range in age from from just three years to eighteen.

They live an unimaginable life.  Anything to survive.  They beg, steal, work for abusers, prostitute themselves - whatever it takes to survive another day.  Many work a full day only to afford one meal.  And for the youngest and smallest this work could be in vain when an older, stronger child beats them and steals this small sum they have earned.  Then, with no health care available, what was a fight over food could result in injuries that remain a lifetime.

They exist everywhere, in all the large towns and cities of developing countries.  They sleep, often cold and always hungry, in the streets, under bridges, in alleys and under streets huddled next to water pipes to stay warm.  They are wrapped in plastic or newspapers or nothing while some sleep on cardboard and others on concrete.  Sadly, some even sleep in garbage dumpsters for safety.

Most are drug addicts.  They inhale industrial glue sold to them by unscrupulous people.  This powerful mind and body-numbing substance relieves their hunger and helps them escape the mental trauma of sexual abuse, exploitation, brutal beatings and an overall disregard from the community around them.  In some countries renegades come out at night and shoot them like dogs to clean up the neighborhood.  They are seen as having no worth. 

Many of these defenseless children are invisible to the world.  They have no birth certificate, no records.  Most, at death, are buried in unmarked graves.   

Please help a street child escape the streets.