Essay on Street Children in Central America

The term ‘street children’ refers to children for whom the street more than their family has become their real home. It includes children who might not necessarily be homeless or without families, but who live in situations where there is no protection, supervision, or direction from responsible adults.

Street children are primarily an urban phenomenon; poverty drives people in search of better opportunities to urban areas, where family ties are looser, adult supervision less, and social safety nets often nonexistent. In an effort to escape hardship, children leave what served as home and walk, hitchhike, or hop trains in the unrealistic hope of reaching the United States.

Most of them make it only to Guatemala, ending up in situations as poor as those they left (Bruce, 2001). Far fewer may reach Mexico, and fewer still may get to the United States and Canada, according to Bruce Harris of Casa Alianza, a branch of the New York-based Covenant House that provides food, shelter, and other services to homeless children in Mexico and Central America.
"Street children" is a widely used term that can have many different meanings. In Central America, street children are commonly divided into two groups: (Bruce, 2001)

1. Market Children, who are children working in the streets and markets in the cities, selling various smaller items, and who live and work with their families, and
2. Street Children, who work, live and sleep in the streets, and often lack regular contact with their families.

Only a minority (25%) of all "street kids" in Central America actually belongs to the latter group, although the increase in the number of street children over the last decade has been massive (an eight time increase in Tegucigalpa alone). Most street children are boys and leave their homes around the age of 12 (Mickelson, 2000)................

ESSAY ON THE AMERICAS