SAVE THE HOMELESS MINISTRY
(Sagip "Save" and Yagit "Homeless")
WHY BECOME A STREET CHILD?
Who would become a Street Child by choice? This was a
question frequently asked by us. Several factors emerged as the provoking
reasons. This life-style is forced onto these children for survival. They
lack the basic needs that most of us enjoy; they come from violent and
broken homes and their fathers demanding further to feed their drunkenness.
These children do not want beatings, starvation and deprivation of security
and love.
Some are forced from a very young age to work and earn
money, a few are influenced by peer pressure, and some are orphans fighting
a daily battle to survive. Boys who are unable to tolerate the daily beatings
and dysfunctional family life run away and become street children. Girls
are forced to look after younger family members and even have to beg for
their own survival and that of the younger child. They are treated as slaves
in the home and many are forced into prostitution at a very early age.To
be a street child is to live a life of hell.
LIFE ON THE STREET
Though the majority of the street
children manage to earn or scavenge their daily food, they are denied the
basics of survival, all street children and street-pickers are:
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Abused and exploited.
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Deprived (lacking job, money, food
and shelter, they are forced into begging, thieving, drug peddling, pimping,
and prostitution.)
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Regarded as juvenile delinquents and
antisocial elements, they are often falsely accused of crimes and sent
to secure homes of correction, or worse, put into adult prisons
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Engage in gambling, a popular pastime
on the street.
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Denied education.
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Cut off from parental influence and
guidance.
Most importantly, the children on the
streets remain deprived of their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing
and the security of family love and a home. With no adult to care for them,
these children have no role model for guidance, surviving and fending for
themselves and coping with all the problems of the local community, way
before they have developed the physical and emotional maturity this demands.
Most street children and street-pickers
suffer from diseases like scabies; infestation of lice; chronic dysentery;
worms; TB; epilepsy, lung, ear, dental, nose and throat infections; chronic
cuts; unhealed abrasions and some, sexually transmitted diseases, all these
are caused by extreme poverty, exploitation, malnutrition and unhygienic
surroundings in which the children are forced live.
In a recent survey it was estimated
that there are about 200,000 street-pickers in Metro Manila (65% of these
are children) and 130,000 street children living in extreme physical and
spiritual poverty. They live on the streets, railway platforms, and the
unhygienic disease-infested slums in and around Metro Manila, where 1350
slum areas have already been identified.
These children are shunned by society
as they are in rags, filthy, infested and smell badly, they are very suspicious
of everyone, known as hard knocks, and cannot believe that anyone can give
them unconditional love. They are afraid of the police and give false names
if arrested, when they are arrested they are put in “prison”, where many
are sexually assaulted, and abused, so even if a child should have the
chance to return home they would be too ashamed to do so.
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"PLEASE HELP US BRING
LOVE & HOPE
TO THE PEOPLE IN NEED"
All funding for sponsorship will
go directly to the ministry needs.
We DO NOT retain any portion
of the funding.
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