The Forgotten Street Children Of The World

During Pope Francis' visit at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila early this year, many in the audience (and many more watching on TV) were caught by surprise when a former street child, Glyzelle Palomar, tearfully asked the sharp question nobody expected from her "Why is God allowing such things to happen, even if it is not the fault of the children? And why are there only very few people helping us?" 

Nobody saw it coming. Her words pierced the hearts of the millions who heard it simply because what she said is so true and most of us are in some ways guilty of becoming numb to their plight and in our eyes they cease to exist. Instead of pity, we feel annoyance. Her words are an indictment of society. 

We are aware of the complexity of these kids' life situation. Many of them are victims of physical and even sexual abuse and, at an early age, are exposed to drugs and sexual exploitation. Like those scenes we saw in the Bollywood movie 'Slumdog Millionaire', not a few of these street kids are being manipulated by criminal syndicates to go around the city begging on the streets for them. Growing up distrustful of the adults in their young lives, it's not easy to set up social programs to reach out to them as evidenced by the lack of success by many government agencies and other advocacy groups working with street children. What's more embarrassing are reports that the same agencies handling the street kids even attempted to "hide" these children when foreign dignitaries come to visit their countries as was the case in the Philippines when Pope Francis came to visit in January this year.

I believe success will be a lot easier if public support is strong which is really not the case as pointed out by Glyzelle  with her 'why are there only very few people helping us?.'  We all let these kids down. So what can we do as citizens? I believe public awareness (and acceptance) of their difficult struggle to survive is the first step in helping the homeless children in the streets of Manila, Bangkok, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Durban in South Africa and anywhere else in the world where there are  street children roaming around their cities. With strong public support, more effective social programs by both government and non-governmental organizations will get easily adopted and implemented.




Let's hope that countries will stop ignoring these kids and instead serious and concrete actions will be implemented by governments, church and other civic organizations to uplift them out of their miserable lives.