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Street Kids in Honduras |
Click on a page number below to see our different sections about street kids:
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| This street boy poses after dark in Tegucigalpa's downtown area. His left hand is tucked inside his shirt in order to hide the jar of yellow glue that he is inhaling to get high. It is this very addiction that makes it so hard for the kids to leave the streets. They may check into a program for a week or two, but soon the addiction to the yellow glue calls them back to the streets. |
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According to UNICEF,
there are more than 100,000,000 street children in the world.
An estimated 40% of these live and sleep on streets, with no adult to
care for them or defend them, while the other 60% spend a majority of
their time in the streets. 40 million of these kids live in Latin
America, where sixty percent of the total population of children live in
poverty.
In Honduras, the majority of street kids live in Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, the two largest cities in the country. Most of them flee from homes where abject poverty, violence, alcoholism, and familial disintegration are the norm. They may beg, steal, dig through trash, shine shoes or do other odd jobs in order to survive. Most of them become addicted to toxic "yellow" glue, which is highly addictive and extremely damaging to the human body. Many Honduran street kids do not make it to their eighteenth birthday. Recently, the street kids have had to go underground. Since the army has begun patrolling the streets since January 2002, the street kids can no longer safely hang out in public places. Driving around Tegucigalpa during daylight hours, one would almost be convinced that the situation with the street kids has improved. The kids who used to hang out by the downtown Pizza Hut or in the park by the National Congress are no longer there! But take a drive after dark, and the kids who have survived the violence of the past year come out of hiding. Stop your car in certain places in the nighttime hours, and twenty-to-thirty kids will surround it to beg for food. If anything, the situation seems more desperate in 2003 than it has in the past for these forgotten children. The Honduran government has begun some new initiatives to try to help the street kids. For instance, the municipality of Tegucigalpa has recently opened a walk-in center for the younger street kids. It is our prayer that, as the government and the private organizations work together, we can one day provide the means for every one of these kids to leave the streets. |
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| The Micah Project's Darwin (right) visits with a friend that he lived with on the streets for six years. Why did our Darwin choose to give up street life and drugs, while Pirroco (street nickname), left, remains on the streets? It is our hope that Pirroco will see Darwin's example and realize that he, too, can make a new start! |
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| This street girl, whose identity we have protected, shows us that she is pregnant. Tragically, this means that her baby, if it survives, will grow up knowing nothing but the misery of street life. |
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| Many street kids and families build temporary shacks like this one (exterior and interior view) near the banks of the river that divides Tegucigalpa in two. |
Thanks to Romondo Davis from www.davisinteractive.com for taking these photos.
