By Catharina van den Bosch | Founder/Director
We have been asked by social services to re-start our project with street children. We had stopped this project during the war as we needed to concentrate more on the unaccompanied minors. But the numbers of unaccompanied children has gone down, but the problems with street children has increased.
We decided to do a survey together with social services in order to get an idea of the numbers and the needs. We spent 5 days on the streets of Shire. 159 children were voluntary to be interviewed. This is not representative of the total number of street children but it gives an idea of their needs.
Many children were addicted to smoking, drinking and drugs. Many children were out of school, some were sleeping on the streets at night, some found enough money to rent floor space in a tin sheet shelter. Most didn't have access to proper health care, suffered from a shortage of food and often were involved in petty crimes.
Their situation is heartbreaking but the positive things was that the majority of the children still had dreams about a better future and the majority wanted to get help to get off their addictions and back to family.
This has given us hope and determination. We need to help these kids before it is too late. We are going to start working with them next week. The plan is to help around 120 children this year. It is not going to be easy, we know from experience! But it is going to be beautiful as these kids are worth our effort, to see them become children again, to work with their families and get them back in school so they can work on achieving their dreams.
We thank you for your support for this important work, we would not be able to do it without your contribution
By Carlos Mearg | Project manager
By Catharina van den Bosch | Founder/Director
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