Hey guys :) Yet another part of my paper. Check out the rest of it at the link provided. :) I know it's a long paper, but it's really informative and brings awareness to other children/people sharing this beautiful world with us. Read, rate, comment, whatever.:)Enjoy!!
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/arhipgeo86
Body: How Street Children Survive
Unlike most (if not all) people attending or teaching at this university, street children do not wake up in a warm bed, they do not taste breakfast first thing in the morning, and they cannot call a loved one if they need assistance with any kind of support. They do not have the option of having the things that most of us take for granted handed to them. So what do street children do to survive? Some options are explored below.
A. Begging/Working
The street offers a number of ways for the street child to survive. Begging and doing odd jobs are some of the ways. The young street children usually start off by begging, however, as they get older and they start looking more like adults, street children have to start working (if they had not done so already). “Most work selling candy or popsicles, guarding cars, carrying groceries and other parcels, or shining shoes,” (Scheper-Hughes, & Hoffman, 1994). These odd jobs get the street children some money either to bring to their families if they still sleep at home during the night, or to buy some necessary food for themselves. Sometimes they buy drugs for themselves too. This way of emotional survival, but physical death is described in more detail below.
B. Joining Gangs
Another option (and sometimes-followed route) is joining a gang. Gangs recruit the street children to be the carriers of their drug trafficking because, as mentioned above, children under the age of eighteen have the privilege of not being able to get arrested (although street children often do so anyway) unless they are in the act of committing a crime. Gang members tend to have a “group identity” based on loyalty, control, and domination. They are often concerned with accumulating money and other goods, and power is a big aspect as well. While an exact reason cannot be pinpointed as to why street youth join gangs, studies have shown that many of the street boys get involved in gangs in order to fill the void of not having a family, having the gang as their family instead. As the street youth get older, they tend to move out of the gangs and into a family structure of their own which they create by getting married. (Tudoric-Ghemo, 2005). However, as mentioned before, there are many street children that are caught between gang-gang, or gang-authority, cross fire, and they end up dead.
C. Drugs
The last method that street children use to survive is drugs. Using drugs is not so much a survival strategy, but rather an escape from the cruel world surrounding them. Newspaper articles and other media stories depict numerous accounts of drug abuse among street children. Inhalants, marijuana, cocaine, Valium, and coca paste (much more dangerous than cocaine because it contains both cocaine and traces of all the chemicals used to first process the coca leaves) are only some of the drugs used by street children. Many street children see the use of these drugs as an escape from the harsh realities of street life on a daily basis. They use these drugs to dull their hunger and to facilitate acts of prostitution and other crimes. (Inciardi, & Surratt, 1997).
Street children must be resourceful in order to survive. It takes a whole lot to survive in the streets anywhere, and when there is no other place to go but the streets, these children must do anything in order to live. Some are more resourceful than others, some are luckier than others, but they all must find a way to survive. Luckily, there are people out there that care about the well-being of these children and have implemented better ways of taking them off the streets than killing them off. A couple of organizations are discussed below.
*Next, we will explore some of the organizations that help these children. It's not a comprehensive look at them, and there's always more help to be given to these children. :)
