This is kind of where it starts getting good. Check out the link below for the other two parts for an overview:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/arhipgeo86
Body: Reasons for Being on the Streets
As mentioned before, about twenty percent of the Brazilian population lives in poverty, and that number is only getting larger. That leads to the main reason as to why street children exist in Brazil: poverty.
Poverty is described as “the condition or quality of being poor; need” or “deficiency; inadequacy,” and lastly “scarcity” (Webster’s, 2003). Because many of these children are lacking the most basic needs of food and adequate shelter, they end up leaving their homes and trying to earn money to support both themselves and their families. Many times, numerous other problems may arise from living in poverty as well, making it even more stressful for the individuals trying to get by.
Due to the family living in poverty as a whole, stress runs high for both the parents and the children. The whole family lacks the most basic needs and so when the parents (usually single moms) go to work to support their families the children are often left at home to either work around the house or to go out in the streets and help earn some money to support the family. When they come back from the streets, parents may welcome them with a drunken beating. This shows that these children not only lack food and adequate shelter, but they also lack love, affection, safety needs, structure, order, and predictability in their lives. Many children end up being children of the streets (living on the streets permanently) in order to escape work demands at home and family problems including physical abuse and a feeling of rejection. (“Working with Street Children,” 2000). To children, where hunger, abuse, poverty and neglect is the norm in their homes, making “a life under bridges and in bus station restrooms seems more ‘peaceful’ (a term that more than one street child used to describe his life in an abandoned building in Recife),” (Scheper-Hughes, & Hoffman, 1994).
Another effect of poverty is lack of education. Many children living in poverty do not attend primary school or have to repeat years. “Only 38 percent of those who start complete. Many arrive at school tired and hungry after long hours of work,” (Swift, 1996, p. 14-16). Poverty leads children to work in the streets because they cannot afford to go to school, and because they are not generally educated, they cannot get better paying jobs, ones that would get them out of being street children. And, so, poverty seems to create a vicious cycle that provides no hope for escape out of the streets for the children.
Poverty, along with a lack of education and inadequate caring, protection, and supervision by responsible adults (or support system), all lead to the possibility of children becoming street children, and this occurrence causes problems both for the children and the public at large.
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