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(Reproduced from the Daily Mirror of January 29, 2002) By Damitha Hemachandra Ruwan is 12 years old. He was flying kites after school and came running when Mrs. Kusum Wijesingha, the manager of the Sarvodaya day shelter, called out to him. He is a year seven student at the Bandaranaike Vidyalaya, Borella and spends his afternoons at the Sarvodaya day shelter. He has a sister, who goes to school in Kelaniya and a little brother at home. His mother makes incense sticks and his father works at Colombo Municipal Council. Today Ruwan has a proper home in Kelaniya, Polhena. However, things were different a few years ago. Ten years back, before Sarvodaya found them, Ruwan and his sister with their parents, were living in the Viharamaha Devi Park in Colombo. Both his parents were beggars and his sister, who was then four, was helping them by begging. Sixteen-year-old Nimal's story is different to Ruwan's in many ways. He lives permanently at the Sarvodaya day shelter and goes to the same school as Ruwan. He still studies in year nine and his mother still lives on the Borella pavement. His father is a natami in Pettah. Nimal joined the day shelter when he was four years old. As a child he went through a lot before he joined the place. " I was at the probation centre but escaped twice. I did not like it there. Finally, I was introduced to the Sarvodaya day centre, " he said. Twice police detained him for begging in the streets, today; Nimal insists that he is happy at the Sarvodaya Centre. He is learning to weld. " I like to learn welding," he said. Ruwan and Nimal are just two of the 'street kids' who were lucky enough to escape street life and get a decent education and a vocational training. There are 43 children under the Sarvodaya project an estimated 600 more children live on the streets of Colombo, in the municipal areas. Nila is one of them and she begs from bus travellers. She gets into a bus from the Maharagama main bus station, sings snatches of Sinhala and Hindi songs and collects coins from the travellers. She is 10 years old with a mature face. Her childhood is over. "I sleep in the bus shelter with my little sister and my mother," she said. Nila knows nothing about her father. " I would like to go to school," she says. No one knows how many street children there are. The Director of the Child Protection Bureau, Prof. Harendra de Silva insists that the problem is not as chronic as in some other countries. " But even if there is one child on the street it is a problem and we have 600 of them alone in the CMC area," he said. They are scattered in highly urbanized areas like Pettah, Borella, Punchi-Borella, Obesekarapura, Wellawatte, Bambalapitiya and Nugegoda. The boys heavily outnumbered the girls, as they seem to be more under parental protection and management. Many of the street children do not actually live on the street but they move to the streets daily to earn a living. They roam the streets in groups or with their parents and do various chores to earn money. Their major income sources are begging, acting as porters, rag picking, pimping, selling odd things like lottery tickets, helping street vendors and tourists and child prostitution. Many of the children do not make or think about their future. An interesting characteristic of these working street children is that they do not have a specific time frame for daily routines. One can see them sleeping until 1.00 pm and then starting work. Most of these children live in family- like group and each group has its rules and a leader. An older child, who is physically strong, has good network ability and is informed about day-to-day demands of the street, usually becomes the leader of a group. They share almost everything with the group including money, food and clothing. They do not like to be in debt or credit. "These street kids are highly disciplined, although they may not fit into accepted social norms”, PEACE Chairperson Maureen Seneviratne said. " They have a tremendous capacity for tolerance, teamwork and the ability to cope with skills. For them management is not a formal and structural matter but they can manage very difficult situations," she said. This is true of almost all the kids who live on the street. They are highly confident individuals and have a high level of self-esteem. When Ruwan, Nimal or Nila explained there past experience they never showed a trace of embarrassment as normal kids would have. But then they are normal kids themselves who unfortunately have to face physical, sexual and mental abuse almost every day. The adults, who live with them, set them bad examples. These children who lead a poor quality of life face these tortures daily as something normal. What is being done to help these children? Most of the existing work is being done by non-governmental organisations while the Child Protection Bureau is about to launch a programme for them. Much is done by individual organisations but there is no common programme or no clear agenda available to help street children. " The word 'street children' itself is stigmatized and help generally comes only in traditional forms like food and clothing," Prof. Harendra de Silva explained. "The children's practices and culture needs to be analysed before doing any programme with or for them. We are working on this at the moment," he said. According to him, most of the street children tend to run away from probation homes, which provide them food, clothing, medicine and education as they are re-trained into formal life styles without any preparation. " Therefore, there should be a different kind of shelter for them and they need to be given breathing space before being introduced to a particular life style," he said. The time has come for society to offer more help than just food and clothes to these children. They need to be educated and enrolled into the normal social stream. This is easier said than done, children alone cannot be rehabilitated, their parents too need help. Sarvodaya is one of the few places, which manages a day shelter for street children and their parents with funding from 'Hope for Children'. Children between the ages 4 to 18 are provided with informal and formal education while their parents are trained for various vocations and self-employment. " When a street family comes to us for help we find them a house on rent and train them for self employment and jobs so they can maintain a decent life standard of life and send the children to school," Mrs. Wijesingha said. The children receive formal school education from the Bandaranaike Vidyalaya, situated nearby while Sarvodaya provides them with the vocational training. Some even go for in-job training and get employment. PEACE has a weekend programme for under privileged children and their mothers at Mattakkuliya, where they get a formal education and are taught ‘living skills’ while their mothers receive self-employment skills which keep them and their children away from street life. These are just two individual programmes, which cater to only a few of the street children community. What would be the fate of the others who are not lucky enough? They would grow up in the street feeling angry and suspicious of society. It's time for society to lend them a hand.
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