Mission Road, Narciso Perez St
Bonga Menor
Bustos, Bulacan, 3007
Philippines
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Growing up on the street
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For children without a home, each day is a fight for survival.
More than 1.5 million children live on the streets in the Philippines. In metropolitan Manila, where rapid urban development lured many rural families with hopes of a better life, the failure of those dreams is evident in sprawling slums and squatter communities. For abandoned children, runaways, and orphans living this harsh existence, the underside of a bridge may be the only roof over their heads. Home is a pushcart filled with their meager belongings. Many sleep and rest upon a cardboard hearth, a flimsy focal point for a family unit held together by the most tenuous of bonds. Crippled by poverty, parents and guardians send their children out onto the streets to beg, even steal, or subject them to physical or sexual abuse.
For the children endangered by those who should protect them, the street is a way out. Life among strangers is often safer than with even their closest relations. Working as many as 14 hours a day, the children find sustenance by begging, picking through garbage for bits of plastic and other items to sell, shining shoes, or just simply scrounging through the garbage at local markets for something to eat. Many are quite resilient and become adept at providing for themselves and finding resourceful means to meet their basic needs.
Nonetheless, these street children face grave threats. Living unsupervised, children as young as 9 years old can become addicted to drugs. Many, from a very young age, habitually inhale the commercial glue “rugby,” which many poor Filipinos use to quell hunger pangs. Left to their own devices, children by age 12 may resort to petty thievery, pickpocketing, and the like or get swept up by the commercial sex trade. Just as their parents or guardians fail to keep them safe, so do corrupt civil authorities who often resort to punitive tactics—such as beatings or arrests—that can far exceed the seriousness of their crimes. Lacking adult advocates, street children may also fall victim to extortion by police who demand payment for protection or sex in return for not filing false charges. Death at age 13 is not unlikely for a child getting by on only his or her own resources and wits.
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Spotlight on the Children:
Read Loren's Biography
Meet a few SMDP faces:
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