Target groups
Priority is given to street-connected children and young people, the most deprived children and young people, children and young people with disabilities, young people who have not received appropriate training, rejected or abandoned children, orphans and unemployed young graduates. Particular attention will be paid to girls.
The target groups of Empowering ToMorrow’s generation are children and young people.
Children working on the streets and children living on the streets
We need to distinguish between 2 types of children living on the streets of large cities in the developing world.
Children working on the streets
These children roam the streets all day but can still go home at night. They still have a home and a family but no longer go to school and are exposed every day to the dangers of street life, often pushed by their own families into bringing home a little money. They spend most of their time begging, selling trinkets, shining shoes or washing cars…
Children living on the streets
These children have cut all ties with their families, either as a result of family conflicts or following the loss of their parents, and are therefore forced to live and sleep on the streets. They are therefore the most vulnerable and most deprived of all, as they have no one left to rely on and must fend for themselves to survive.
Figures
Although it is difficult to establish the exact number of children living and/or working on the streets worldwide, UNICEF provides the following figures: there are thought to be 100 million children living and/or working on the streets (in the broad sense), of whom 40 million are in Latin America, 30 million in Africa and 30 million in Asia. Around 75% are thought to be children working on the streets and 25% children living on the streets. Moreover, the number of children living on the streets has increased over the last decade, in line with population growth in the Third World.
Why do these children end up on the streets?
Children are the first victims of poverty. Families left with no income at all may end up turning their children out so that there are fewer mouths to feed.
1. Poverty
Les campagnes étant de plus en plus démunies, la ville exerce un attrait considérable. Les enfants pensent qu’ils pourront aisément gagner leur vie dans les villes et préfèrent quitter leur foyer.
2. Rural exodus
In the past, the concept of the extended family prevailed and communities showed great solidarity with one another. Thus every child found a place in the community, since there was always a family member, however distant in the family line, to provide a minimum of shelter and protection. But nowadays, communities increasingly shirk their responsibility for children and families no longer help one another. As a result, the orphaned or mistreated child can no longer count on other members of the community as in the past. The street becomes their only means of survival.
3. Community breakdown
Physical, emotional and sexual abuse by parents (often by step-parents) is the most common reason driving children to leave their families. Parents in prison, parents who are drug addicts or alcoholics, and mothers who are prostitutes make children’s lives at home unbearable. Children would rather face life on the streets than endure such abuse.
4. Conflits familiaux
Many children in developing countries are orphans as a result of armed conflict and, for the past two decades, because of the death of their parents from AIDS. UNAIDS estimates that at the end of 1997 there were 6.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 95% of them living in sub-Saharan Africa.
In most cases, a child decides to live on the streets when several of these factors affect them at the same time.
5. Orphans
Finding food is a constant worry. They rummage through bins, steal fruit from markets or, with the little money they earn, buy what they can. As a result, they suffer from serious malnutrition and are in a generally weakened state. (They buy water from street vendors, but it is often contaminated.)
The children sleep wherever they can, trying to find places that protect them somewhat from the cold: under cardboard in doorways, under bridges, in rubbish dumps, in abandoned buildings.
The children have nowhere to wash themselves or their clothes, so they are constantly dirty. They have no change of clothes, walk barefoot and almost never wash. As a result, they catch all kinds of infections and illnesses because of their very unhygienic way of life. Their ragged appearance makes people reject them even more.
Les enfants n’ont pas d’endroit pour se laver et laver leurs vêtements, donc ils sont constamment souillés. Ils n’ont pas d’habit de rechange, marchent pieds nus, ne se lavent quasiment jamais. Ils attrapent ainsi toutes sortes d’infections et maladies dues à leur mode de vie très peu hygiénique. Cette apparence en haillons accentue le rejet de la population.
The street exposes them to every danger : violence from deranged individuals, from the police, and sometimes even death. In some Latin American countries such as Brazil and Colombia, there are escuadrones de la muerte whose mission is to “clean up” neighbourhoods of these children. They are prime targets for all kinds of violence. Night heightens the danger: the money they have earned during the day is often stolen from them, which prevents them from saving a little money to improve their situation.
Easily treatable illnesses: because of their unhygienic way of life, nutritional deficiencies and contaminated water, these children catch illnesses that could easily be treated. They catch skin diseases such as scabies, ringworm and lice. They suffer from intestinal disorders, diarrhoea and bronchial diseases that can develop into tuberculosis. They leave their wounds untreated, and these can become much more serious if they get infected.
Malaria is also a major problem in tropical countries because children have no protection against mosquitoes. Yet malaria can be fatal if it is not treated in time.
Furthermore, girls become pregnant very young, as prostitution is one of the ways they survive. They sometimes die in childbirth, which takes place in appalling conditions.
AIDS: Despite new treatments, the incidence of AIDS in developing countries is extremely high. 1.3 million people were infected with HIV worldwide in 2022. UNAIDS also reports that, in 2022, 1.5 million children (aged 0 to 14) were living with HIV. 53% of people living with HIV are women and girls, and in sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women accounted for more than 77% of new infections.
Children living on the streets are the hardest hit by AIDS, as they have only a very vague knowledge of how the disease is transmitted and have no access to treatment.
They transmit the virus to one another mainly through sexual contact, since they use no protection. Injected drugs are too expensive, so their use is marginal. Furthermore, girls living on the streets who survive through prostitution transmit the virus at great speed. Unfortunately, misinformation and the difficulties these children face every day leave little room for AIDS among their concerns. In addition, there are many children who are HIV-positive at birth and who will develop the disease very quickly since, in children, HIV infection progresses very rapidly to full-blown disease.
75% of children living on the streets inhale solvents. They try to escape their daily hardships by inhaling solvents such as glue (toluene, cyclohexane, …). They soak small scraps of cloth which they clutch all day long. They need it to cope with the cold, hunger, fear and loneliness. The effects are immediate, causing an intoxication that alters their perception of reality. The most commonly used solvent is cobbler’s glue, as it is readily available and cheap.
Yet this drug is very dangerous. Solvents are designed to dissolve fats; they attack the myelin surrounding the nerve cells and the damage is permanent. Regular use at a crucial period of psychomotor development leads to irreversible damage to the central nervous system, lungs, liver, heart and brain. Moreover, this drug can trigger fits of aggression.
The use of other drugs is much less common because they are too expensive for them.
Glue destroys their ability to escape street life and keeps the children trapped on the streets.
Children face many problems on the street
To cope with loneliness and insecurity, children band together in gangs. Joining one of these “nests” is practically inevitable. This gives them greater security and a better chance of getting by. The friendship that binds its members is paramount, as it recreates an emotional foundation lost when they broke away from their family or when their parents died.
Organisation within the group is generally very hierarchical, with each member’s role strictly defined. There is always a leader, usually the oldest, who manages the group’s daily activities. In general, members of the nest entrust their money to the youngest in the group. Every member is expected to bring back food or money at the end of the day.
The nest meets many of the children’s needs but can also be a source of exploitation, with the older children exploiting the younger ones in exchange for protection.
Few of them are lucky enough to have a small job, but some manage to earn a little money through various activities: shining shoes, selling small trinkets, cleaning and collecting rubbish, salvaging tins, bottles and aluminium from bins and dumps, carrying parcels, washing cars…
Children do not like begging, because the street is their domain and they prefer to eat with money they have earned themselves. But they often have no choice. When they do beg, they usually stand outside the entrances of the big city hotels.
To survive on the streets, children sometimes have to resort to all kinds of illicit activities. They roam the streets stealing goods from shopkeepers, robbing anyone who has money…
For girls living on the streets, prostitution is the main means of survival. They turn to it very young, for very little money. Some go into households as domestic servants and are forced into prostitution there as well.
Girls living on the streets earn very little money because they are regarded as dirty prostitutes.
Because of prostitution, they become pregnant very young and then find themselves with an extra mouth to feed. They catch all kinds of diseases, particularly AIDS, since they generally use no protection with clients.
How do the children manage to survive?
Faced with all the problems they must confront every day to survive, the children try to cope by forming gangs and getting money by any means they can: odd jobs, begging, petty crime, prostitution.