Plan's work with street children
A street child is any child who works and/or lives on the streets. Often highly mobile, street children can alternate between living on the streets and living with their families. Children who work on the streets may become involved in scavenging, begging, hawking, prostitution or theft to aid their survival. Some may only work on the streets during particular periods of the year, and attend school at other times. This makes it extremely difficult to estimate the total number of street children.
Plan's response
Plan works together with children, their families and their communities to ensure that no child is forced by circumstances to look to the streets for a livelihood or for accommodation.
Plan has a two-pronged approach to working with street children:
- preventative work, addressing the long-term needs of poor families to improve household income and to try to ensure that no family is so poor that children are forced to work in an environment detrimental to their well-being
- and face-to-face work with those children already on the streets - Plan works with those children already on the streets in order to ensure that they have access to basic services and the means to improve their lives. We then design programmes for street children based on their priorities and with their participation
Plan's work addresses both the reasons that force children to turn to the streets as a place to work or live, such as poverty, abuse or natural disaster, and the factors that make the street a more attractive alternative. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic increase in the numbers of children orphaned by AIDS and the subsequent strain on the extended family has resulted in many turning to the streets for their livelihood. For some children, perceptions that larger towns offer greater economic opportunities make the street a more attractive alternative than a poverty-stricken rural household.
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