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Street
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Background
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The early years of
the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/ CAUTION:
There is always a risk in posting links to external websites. Some of the following links may possibly
lead to websites that present information that is unsubstantiated, misleading
or even false. Their authenticity has
not been verified and their content has not been validated. A
Video Playlist from a Global perspective www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EA135C2867F5EE91 There are an increasing
number of street children videos now available that constitute a
supplementary source of information for researchers, especially for those who
may not have experienced the reality of street children. -- Playlist
developed by Brian Horne of almudo.com & streetkidnews.blogsome.com Children who work in the street in Izmir,
Turkey Hatice Bal Yilmaz and Şeyda Dülgerler, Ege University, Izmir Turkey -- SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND
PERSONALITY, February 2011, 39(1), 129-144 © Society for Personality Research
(Inc.) DOI0.2224/sbp.2011.39.1.129 www.sbp-journal.com/index.php/sbp/article/view/2099 [accessed 28 October 2017] Using Izmir, Turkey
as a case study the risk factors leading children to work in the streets were
identified. Participants in the study were 226 children working in the
streets, average age 10.35±2.21 who worked 6.8±2.11 hours per day. The great
majority of the children were boys (90.2%), 77.9% were of primary school age;
two-thirds of the children were working to provide an economic contribution
to the family; 86.6% were from a large family; 78.8% were from a family that
migrated to a big city. Almost all did not find working in the street safe;
and nearly half were not hopeful about the future. It was established that
frequent problems in the children’s families include poverty, unemployment,
poor education, having a large family, poor family functioning, migration,
limited possibilities of shelter, and domestic violence, including the
beating of wives and children. Although nearly all the children still lived
with their families, a small percentage of the children (5.8%) had begun
living permanently on the streets and then cut ties with their families. A
significant relationship was found between living on the streets and the age
of the child, the father’s education, and the father’s use of alcohol. And Now My Soul Is Hardened - Abandoned
Children in Soviet Ball, Alan M. And Now My Soul Is Hardened:
Abandoned Children in Soviet ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft700007p9/ [accessed 23 August 2011] PREFACE - No spectacle in
Soviet cities more troubled Russian and foreign observers during the first postrevolutionary decade than the millions of orphaned
and abandoned children known as besprizornye. Whether portrayed as pitiable victims of
war and famine or as devious wolf-children preying on the surrounding
population to support cocaine and gambling habits, they haunted the works of
journalists, travelers, and Party members alike. “Every visitor sees it
first,” noted an American correspondent, “and is so shocked by the sight that
the most widely known Russian youth are the…homeless children flapping along
the main streets of cities and the main routes of travel like ragged flocks
of animated scarecrows.” Brian Horne of
almudo.com suggests this book because so much of what we have on street
children is very recent in historical terms and this book gives a fascinating
account of Russian street children of seventy or eighty years ago. XVII. The Street Arab Jacob A. Riis. How the Other Half Lives. 1890 [accessed 23 August 2011] The Street Arab has
all the faults and all the virtues of the lawless life he leads. Vagabond
that he is, acknowledging no authority and owing no allegiance to anybody or
anything, with his grimy fist raised against society whenever it tries to
coerce him, he is as bright and sharp as the weasel, which, among all the
predatory beasts, he most resembles. His sturdy independence, love of freedom
and absolute self-reliance, together with his rude sense of justice that
enables him to govern his little community, not always in accordance with
municipal law or city ordinances, but often a good deal closer to the saving
line of “doing to others as one would be done by”. Brian Horne of
almudo.com also recommends this book to us, commenting that “aside from its
period style, [it] reads like something that could have been written
yesterday”. Starting a new life in the New World David Charters, [accessed 23 August 2011] Most judgments
about how life should be for other people depend on where you are sitting at
the time. Then up spring two writers with a book about an extraordinary
period in our history and how it affected poor children. Yet, despite all the facts and statistics,
it is difficult to know now whether what happened to those children was good
or bad. This is the almost
forgotten story about thousands of children sent to the British colonies of [NEW Lives for Old:
The Story of Britain’s Child Migrants, by Roger Kershaw and Janet Sacks] What does it mean
to be a street kid? Shine a Light SAL www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=780&pst=3944 [accessed 3 March 2015] [scroll down to STREET KIDS IN LATIN AMERICA] Imagine you are
eight years old. Maybe your parents beat you, and you ran away. Maybe they
didn't have the money to support you, or maybe it just seemed that way, so
you decided to leave home so there would be more food for your little sister.
If you live in Shine a Light
Annual Report [PDF] Shine a Light SAL, 2010 www.shinealight.org/Annual.pdf [accessed 23 August 2011] SHINE A LIGHT
ACHIEVEMENTS, 2010
- Shine a Light’s model depends on two major components: direct work with
marginalized children to help them document the best ways to change the
world, and publishing this information so that people and organizations can use
it. In 2010, we advanced in both of these fields, developing important new
projects while publishing important Digital workshops, websites, books, and
academic papers. Uphold Children's Dignity Philani Nyatsanza,
The Herald, allafrica.com/stories/200904080118.html [partially accessed 18 August 2011 - access
restricted] It has become
common parlance, so much that we have ignored the consequences of such labels
as "street children" and "Aids orphans". In simple terms, this is not just naming,
but naming and shaming in the same breathe. The power of life and death is in
the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Why
should a child be made to pay the price of something over which they had
neither power, say, like losing a parent to an HIV-related illness? The tragedy is that such shaming has a
very high price because, whether we see it or not, it will always haunt the
child, looming over them like some spectre of evil. Every time you call
them "street children" or "Aids orphans" you are
prophesying into their lives (words are carriers of spiritual power) and at
the end of the day, they act and behave in a manner consistent with what you
have labelled them. So, instead of
getting answers to the problem of children making a "home" in the
streets, we exacerbate this socio-economic ill by condemnation through
labelling. "Street
children" seems to have become almost like a trade name, because it is
drawn directly from the disadvantaged children's characteristically grimy
lifestyles in the streets. But
whether they live and work in streets, in families and communities, they are
just children. Kids
struggle to survive - Prefer homelessness to cruel treatment in shelters Douglas Birch, articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-01-20/news/0201200244_1_railway-station-subway-begging [accessed 17 May 2012] They flutter
through the Kursky railway station like flocks of
dirt-smudged pigeons, sniffing glue fumes out of plastic bags, begging for
money from strangers and scattering as police approach waving
nightsticks. These are Neglecting a massive problem: drug abuse
among street children Indo-Asian News Service IANS, www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=d7832bed-ac1f-4858-904a-4b47f0d95530 [accessed 23 August 2011] Very little data is
available on street children living with HIV/AIDS in Background
Information on Street Children [PDF] Arms of love Nicaragua Missions Guide www.armsoflove.org/images/uploads/documents/Short-term_Teams_Manual.pdf [accessed 23 August 2011] Street
children live in abandoned buildings, back alleys, parks, garbage dumps,
cemeteries, and other public places.
During the day, they will tend to congregate in places with significant
pedestrian traffic, such as street corners, markets, bus terminals, and ferry
buildings. When they are young, street
children are often able to survive by begging or selling trinkets. As they grow older, however, people tend to
have less compassion on them, and they will typically resort to petty theft
and prostitution to survive. When kids end up
on the street Jen Banbury,
UNICEF USA, 10 July 2008 fieldnotes.unicefusa.org/2008/07/when_kids_end_up_on_the_street.html [accessed 3 March 2015] Children
end up on the street for a whole host of reasons. They may have been orphaned
by HIV/AIDS or by war. They may be fleeing abusive households or homes where
there’s not enough food for the whole family. Maybe it’s something simple: in
Karachi, Pakistan, the number of street children is on the rise because it’s
off-season for fishing and there are few other ways for their parents to earn
a living. Sometimes it’s a reason that, for us, is unimaginable: in Angola,
families abandon children because they’ve been accused of being witches. V. Family
Environment And Alternative
Care [DOC] Committee on the Rights of the Child CRC --
NGO Commentaries to the Initial Report of the Kyrgyz Republic on the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, January 03, 2000 www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.24/kyrgystanNGOreport.doc [accessed 12 June 2011] [page 13] g) CHILDREN DEPRIVED OF
FAMILY ENVIRONMENT - There
are 600-800 street children in Bishkek.
The main reasons are alcoholism of parents, poverty, abuse and home
violence. Street children are excluded
from education. They work at bazaars,
petrol stations or commit petty theft, pocket stealing, car
robbery, quite often they are doing it under leadership of adults. They are often arrested by militia, beaten
and humiliated, have to give bribes to get
free. Many street children live in the
town heating systems, abandoned buildings, etc. In some towns (Bishkek, Kara-Balta) the
shelters run by NGOs for such children can accept only a limited number of
children. Preamble
To The Problematic Of Street Children Extracts from the "Little treaty to
the teachers" written for the teachers of "Enfants
du Soleil" (Children of the Sun) in www.enfantsdesrues-reper.org/151-Preamble-to-the-problematic-of-street-children [accessed 24 August 2011] THE STREET CHILD - Children can be seen
everywhere, at all times. Thus, we
tend somewhat hastily to apply the label of "street children" to
these children that invade the streets. Not all of them should be considered as
street children. Although most of
these children go back home at night, some of them do not have any contact
with their family, with the adults.
They are the real street children. Backward and forward linkages that
strengthen primary education Vimala Ramachandran, 17
August 2006 -- This is an overview of a collection of 10 case studies. ‘Getting Children Back to School: Case
Studies in Primary Education’ will be published by Sage Publications India in
2003 archive.oneworld.net/article/view/137887 [accessed 23 August 2011] IV CHILDREN, WORK
AND EDUCATION
- Primary education in There is, formally,
a widespread consensus about ending child labour and establishing compulsory
universal primary education for all children up to the age of 14, a
commitment that can be traced back to Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s
efforts at the turn of the last century. Yet, numerous commissions, reports,
plans and experiments notwithstanding, more than five decades after
independence, the situation remains dismal. Not only do many children never
enter school, there are many of those who do drop out before completing basic
education. And scores of children from the most deprived strata are or become
part of the workforce. The
Children On Our Streets - Part I: The Problem Prof. Michael Bourdillon,
www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-1201-bourdillon-I.html [accessed 24 August 2011] For the children
and their families, being on the street is not a problem. It is their
solution to a number of problems. The
Children On Our Streets - Part II The Situation Prof. Michael Bourdillon,
www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0102-bourdilon-II.html [accessed 24 August 2011] When we try to understand
the problems faced by street children, we quickly find that we need to know
something about the home background of the children. We need to look at their families and what
they are leaving in order to be on the streets. Street Children,
Human Rights, And Public Health: A Critique And Future Directions
Catherine Panter-Brick,
Department of Anthropology, www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085359?journalCode=anthro [accessed 24 August 2011] INTRODUCTION: A
SHIFT OF PERSPECTIVE
- What has been called the global or "worldwide phenomenon of street
children" (le Roux 1996) has neither vanished from sight nor effectively
been solved. However, current perspectives tend not to demarcate street
children so radically from other poor children in urban centers or to
conceptualize the homeless in isolation from other groups of children facing
adversity. Welfare agencies now talk of "urban children at risk" (Kapadia
1997), which
conceptualizes street children as one of a number of groups most at risk and
requiring urgent attention. Violence against Children Women's nasilie.net/home.php?mode=article&article_id=360&lang=en [accessed 24 August 2011] Street children are
especially easy targets. They may be beaten by police who extort money
from them or forced to provide sex to avoid arrest or be released from police
custody. Seen as vagrants or criminals, street children have been
tortured, mutilated, and subjected to death threats and extrajudicial
execution. Children’s Rights Human Rights Watch World Report 2000 www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k/Crd.htm#TopOfPage [accessed 24 August 2011] Every country in
the world except for the Assessment Mission
To St Petersburg [DOC] -- Time frame: February 7th -12th 2001, Locations: Hugh Griffiths, Médecins
du Monde www.lakareivarlden.org/files/St%20Petersburg%20rapport%20eng.doc [accessed 27 September 2011] At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] St. Petersburg has
approximately 5 million registered citizens within the municipal boundaries.
There are an estimated 5000 to 7000 street children in HUMAN RIGHTS, LEGAL
ISSUES & LAW ENFORCEMENT - One of the principle barriers standing in the way of
street children accessing their right under the United Nations Convention of
the Rights of the Child to medical care is the fact that many of them lack
the correct documentation. The "Propiska"
is the stamp in the internal Russian passport which notifies doctors, nurses,
police and the health authorities that the holder of the stamp is registered
in a certain city, town or village. If the person seeks state medical care in
a region outside his or her "Propiska"
area, then he or she will be denied it. An ever increasing
number of the children living on the streets of Similarly, both
street children and heroin users are subject to beatings and illegal
detentions by certain police officers. Heroin users are often actively
persecuted by police officers. Such persecution can be lawful when heroin
users break Russian legal codes. However, drug users are subject to arbitrary
arrest, police break new syringes and females are often exposed to sexual
misconduct on the part of the police. Children for whom the street more than
their family has become their real home Human Rights Watch At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 24 August 2011] Street children throughout the world are
subjected to physical abuse by police or have been murdered outright, as
governments treat them as a blight to be eradicated-rather than as children
to be nurtured and protected. They are frequently detained arbitrarily by
police simply because they are homeless, or criminally charged with vague
offenses such as loitering, vagrancy, or petty theft. They are tortured or
beaten by police and often held for long periods in poor conditions. Girls
are sometimes sexually abused, coerced into sexual acts, or raped by police.
Street children also make up a large proportion of the children who enter
criminal justice systems and are committed finally to correctional
institutions (prisons) that are euphemistically called schools, often without
due process. Few advocates speak up for these children, and few street
children have family members or concerned individuals willing and able to
intervene on their behalf. Severe Chill
- As winter deepens in the valley, street children
find their daily life deteriorating At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 24 August 2011] As winter deepens
in the valley, street children find their daily life deteriorating Countering a
Culture of Death Michael Johnstone (Pastoral Assistant at www.salesians.org.uk/Salesians-Articles/street-child.html [accessed 3 March 2015] How do they eat?
Why, they pilfer, they shoplift. They become muggers. These are no angels
these boys. They are filthy dirty. They are foul mouthed. They are
aggressive, with one another no less than with those they meet. They smell.
They are not popular. City worthies want to get rid of them. There are
campaigns to 'street cleanse' them. They are the victims of violence. They
disappear. Hooligans shoot them Ricardo:
‘The only thing I hate in the world is the police’ Jenny Smith, New Internationalist Magazine,
Issue 366, April 1, 2004 www.newint.org/features/2004/04/01/uruguay/ [accessed 24 August 2011] Ricardo’s scarred
hands are always busy – wiping the faces of smaller children, opening doors
for others, picking up dropped items and returning them. He is desperately
trying to give to others that which he has never had on Changing
Paradigms for Working with Street Youth: The Experience of Street Kids
International [PDF] Sauvé, Stephanie, Children, Youth and
Environments 13(1), Spring 2003 [accessed 3 March 2015] ABSTRACT - The United
Nations estimates 100 million street youth across the globe. They are products
of poverty, war, urbanization, political instability, family breakdown, and
HIV/AIDS, among others. Many are not homeless, but primary income earners for
their extended families. Many
participate in the sex and drug trade because of limited income generation
alternatives. How can we support these youth and increase their opportunities
while respecting them as independent actors in their own lives? Street Kids International suggests a
critical paradigm shift as the basis for being responsive and effective and
describes its approaches for working with street youth as participants and
assets within their present communities Police Abuse And Arbitrary Detention Of
Street Children Human Rights Watch, PROMISES BROKEN: An
Assessment of Children's Rights on the 10th Anniversary of the Convention on
the Rights of the Child, November 1999 www.hrw.org/legacy/press/1999/nov/children.htm#_1_5 [accessed 24 August 2011] Attention to street
children has focused largely on their pressing
economic and social plight – poverty, lack of shelter, denial of education,
AIDS, prostitution, and substance abuse. But with the exception of killings
of street children in Street Outreach Stand Up for Kids www.standupforkids.org/streetoutreach.html [accessed 24 August 2011] In the An Outside
Chance: Street Children And Juvenile Justice Marie Wernham,
Consortium for Street Children CSC,
May 2004 www.amazon.co.uk/An-Outside-Chance-International-Perspective/dp/0954788605 [accessed 3 March 2015] The document
entitled, "An Outside Chance: Street Children and Juvenile Justice - An
International Perspective", was published by the Consortium for Street
Children (CSC), in 2004. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the
causes and consequences of street children’s involvement in criminal justice
systems in a wide range of countries. This report, is based on the findings
from a two-year research and advocacy project run by CSC with partners in Street Children -
Community Children Worldwide Resource Library Pangaea, 6 January 2010 pangaea.org/street_children/kids.htm [accessed 24 August 2011] The United Nations
has been attributed as estimating the population of street children worldwide
at 150 million, with the number rising daily. These young people are more
appropriately known as community children, as they are the offspring of our
communal world. Ranging in age from three to eighteen, about 40 percent of
those are homeless--as a percentage of world population, unprecedented in the
history of civilization. Demand & the child sex trade Presenter: Denise Ritchie, jahjah-org.blogspot.com/2006_01_29_archive.html [accessed 24 August 2011] The child sex
trade, like all trades, exists not because there is poverty but because there
is demand and supply. The demand for sex comes from adults, overwhelmingly
men. The supply is that of children, in particular their bodies and sexual
parts. The goods taken and destroyed however are much more than children’s
bodies, but also their minds, their hearts, their spirits, their hopes, their
futures and frequently their lives. Forced Labor: The
Prostitution of Children
[PDF] Papers from a symposium held on September
29, 1995 at the U.S. Department of Labor in www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/us_dep_labor_1996__forced_l.pdf [accessed 24 August 2011] [Part I: Overviews on
Child Prostitution] [2. “Child
Prostitution In Many of the girls
who end up as child prostitutes in Latin American countries have chosen a
sexually exploitative life on the streets, rather than suffer continued
family violence and male incest in their own homes. Again, this type of
society supports and condones such behavior as absolutely indigenous to the
aggressive, predatory nature of men and the passive and compliant nature of
women. This is not only
because of the strong machismo culture in those societies, but is also due to
the worldwide trends of oppression of women. But the additional layer of
machismo in Child Soldiers Ethics, Editor: John K.
Roth, Samem Press, December 2004 · ISBN:
978-1-58765-170-0 salempress.com/Store/samples/ethics_revised/ethics_revised_child_soldiers.htm [accessed 24 August 2011] In 2003, an
estimated 500,000 children under eighteen years of age served in the
government armed forces, paramilitary forces, civil militia, and armed groups
of more than eighty-five nations, and another 300,000 children were active in
armed combat in more than thirty countries. Some of the children were as
young as seven years of age UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
IRIN, Mbanza www.irinnews.org/report/48287/angola-children-victims-of-witchcraft-accusations [accessed 10 March 2015] In some areas of "My parents died
during the war. I moved to my sister's for a while, but they did not want me
to stay there. They threw me out on the street. I lived there a long time
before I came here," 12-year-old Manus told IRIN. He did not want to
say why he was forced onto the streets, but he knows that he and the other
boys in the orphanage are accused of being "wizards". Several of the
boys, like Manus, slept rough at the market or in derelict houses before
being collected by the orphanage. Most of them had also been abandoned by
relatives after their parents died. The
Killings Escalate In Caius Brandao,
International Child Resource Institute ICRI pangaea.org/street_children/latin/brazil.htm [accessed 24 August 2011] Clearly, there is a
perceived benefit to killing destitute children, not only to those who
directly profit from it, i.e., the hit-men. When street children die it also
'benefit' the people who paid the professional killers to clean up the
streets in the first place. In 1994, 1221
minors were killed in the State of A Lamp That Sheds No Light Willy E. Gutman,
Honduras Weekly, 31 July 2010 www.hondurasweekly.com/a-lamp-that-sheds-no-light-201007312787/ This article has been archived by World
Street Children News and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 9 Aug 2013] Fiction also
trivializes fact. There is no romance in the life of street children, only
pain and hopelessness, hunger and fear, disease and death. Real street
children do not sport beguiling smiles. They are prone to misbehave. They
often stink. All could use a bath. But under the
grime, the air of defiance or the crushing indifference their feverish eyes
convey, there is a child, scared, vulnerable, far too young to taste life's
bitter medicine, yet incurably old before his time. In the ghostly
twilight world of street children, there are no magic lamps to rub, no benevolent,
turbaned genies, no flying carpets, no protective amulets, no healing
philters; only evil spirits lurking, stalking easy prey. Unlike Aladdin,
street children do not amass fame and fortune, and no fairy prince or
princess will marry them in the end. Most never leave the streets. Many don't
reach adulthood. Disease, hunger, drugs and bullets often cut their lives
short. Ex–street kids thrive in doc Pieta Woolley, www.straight.com/article/ex-street-kids-thrive-in-doc-0 [accessed 24 August 2011] The film, Metamorphosis:
The Lives of Former Street Kids, has no distributor or broadcaster. Mervyn
created it for a few thousand bucks on credit card, with a volunteer sound
editor and cameraman Ben Hoskyn, a BCIT film grad.
Too much research has focused on why youth stay on the streets, she said. Her
work looks at why some youth successfully launch themselves off the streets. American musician takes on the system Nina Harvey, People's Post, 05/12/2007 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 July 2011] "A lot of organisations aimed at helping these kids simply come in
and try and get them to conform without first discovering what their needs
are. But in order to really help them you need to build a foundation first
and not just go in and tell them what to do. "People seem
to either think they are delinquents, or they pity them, thinking they must
have come from an abusive background. Yes, many of their previous
circumstances may have been tough, but what people don't realise
is that the street life is addictive. These kids have the freedom to move
around as they please. Many of them will choose to stay where they are,
living by their own rules." And that, Brown
says, is the greatest problem. "The structure in this country is flawed.
Children here are making decisions for themselves they are too young to
make." Why Become a Rag-Picker or Street Child? Street Children Ministry www.abfindia.net/ragpickers.html [accessed 24 August 2011] THE
RAGPICKER'S DAILY ROUTINE - As a street
child, between five and eighteen years of age, these children earn their
livelihood by polishing shoes, washing cars, finding parking spaces, rag picking
(recycling garbage), selling lottery tickets and news papers, etc. They also
work as coolies and helpers in automobile repair shops, construction sites,
and hotels. Their average earnings vary between 15 Rupees to 20 per day,
while the more experienced ones earn 25 to 40 Rupees. However, these are the
lucky ones. The Girls are forced into prostitution at an early age. Arising
at dawn, the rag picker children start their rounds. With feet bare and backs
aching, they carry the heavy gunny bags that contain the day's pickings.
Sometimes on foot they travel over 20 kilometers each day for the best
pickings. Their clothing is filthy, tattered, ill fitting, and wholly
inadequate for protection especially, when the weather is wet and cold. Life
is very hard as they rummage (competing and fighting with stray dogs and
cattle) through every filthy garbage heap in the city and railway stations.
All recyclable garbage is collected and sorted: paper, plastic, bottles,
bones, metals and rotting discarded food thrown out by households and railway
passengers. With this they fill their bags and often their starving bellies.
If the day's collection is bad, they resort to stealing for survival. If
good, they rush to the nearest wayside shop to ease their hunger. All
have regular scrap dealers to buy their loot. They receive a meager pittance,
and sometimes this pittance is withheld to repay a previous enforced loan.
Some days they starve. If a better price is negotiated by another dealer, the
child is frequently beaten and tied up. However
the issue of greater concern is related to their pattern of spending, where a
major part of their income is spent on drugs, alcohol, solvent abuse
(sniffing solvents), and gambling. They frequently become involved in street
fights. With little money and too much freedom, they are vulnerable and fall
prey to any number of situations that threaten life and soul. Late
in the afternoon they resume their second round of collection. Then after
sorting and selling their loot, they spend their nights on the streets or in
graveyards, where they are exploited and abused. Older rag pickers and
perverted people give them drugs or threaten them for sexual purposes, thus
exposing them to A.I.D.S, and many more sexual and life threatening diseases. A
rag picker is not a beggar. He works hard and considers rag picking a
profession of choice. It enables him to earn money, daily, and offers him
ample amounts of free time. They are very loyal and protective of each other,
sharing food and money. The rag picker is proud and feels that he is master
of his own life.
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