International Day for Street Children
“The police find us sleeping and they beat us for no reason.”
“When some adults steal people’s property, they say we did it.”
“We are not able to access medical treatment from government hospitals or health centres.”
These are some of the real experiences of children living on the streets.
Today we stand alongside millions of street children around the world who are living in poverty and facing unimaginable hardship.
Hope for Justice is supporting International Day for Street Children.
We are supporting this annual campaign, run by Consortium for Street Children, and calling on governments to commit to equality, to protect every child, to provide access to services and to create new solutions for children who are connected to the streets in any way.
We want children’s own voices to be heard. Our teams asked some of the young people living on the streets of Ethiopia and Uganda what changes they would like to see. Their responses included:
– Education
– Clothing and medical care
– Food distribution at our families’ villages, not on the streets
– Make sure the police identify and arrest traffickers and exploiters
– Help us get back home to our families
We are working to give children access to all of these things and more. Hope for Justice teams go out onto the streets of the cities where we work to engage with children and help keep them safe.
We provide basic care and accommodation for vulnerable and exploited children at our assessment and transition shelters, known as Lighthouses. Here, we focus on restoration – with the ultimate goal of reintegrating children back with their families, or another safe family or community setting. Children and young people can also access education, life skills coaching and vocational training at our Shine Schools.
Our teams place an emphasis on aftercare, ensuring that those children receive continued support to bring about long-term positive change in their lives.
