Street Children

Homelessness can happen to anybody including children. There are over 100 million homeless children that live in the streets all over the world. Street children are categorized as “any girl or boy that has not reached adulthood, and is inadequately protected, directed, and supervised by responsible adults.”

Street children have no home or family support and they move from place to place looking for a place to live. Some return home and visit their family, but return to the streets at night due to poverty, overcrowding, or sexual and physical abuse. There is approximately 40 million homeless Latin America and 18 million in India, and majority of those homeless children are boy the age of 10 to 14.

The unstable lifestyle of homeless children has resulted in a lack of medical care which caused many illnesses. They also struggle to find food to eat and are persuaded by adults to sell drugs, steal and prostitute for them. Children often take drugs to ease the pain they’re suffering from. Over 90 percent of street children take some sort of drug including medicine, alcohol, cigarettes, heroine, and even shoe glue.

There are many government organizations that work to help these street children usually by providing them shelter, safety, healthcare and an education. We can also help to improve the conditions of homeless children by volunteering at homeless shelters, donate funds to these organizations or help to spread awareness of this situation.

http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0904-Homelessness.html