Street Kids Find Help at ‘Home’

MANILA — On steamy weekend afternoons when most Philippine children are at play, Bernardo Peresas goes to school amid the gray concrete crypts of Kalookan cemetery.

One grade accommodates all who show up. Bernardo, an undersized 10-year-old dressed in dingy Boston Celtics shorts that dwarf his spindly legs, is the youngest. Most are in their teens.

The cemetery school is among the most unusual in the world. On a recent Saturday, Bernardo recited from a small red pamphlet that had only 26 sentences, one per page: “It’s my right to be born and to be free. It’s my right to have a good education and develop my potential.”

A school dropout since he fled family violence at age 7, Bernardo is only now learning to read.

The real focus of the graveyard classroom, however, is survival. A dozen street children talked about sniffing a cobbler’s glue called “rugby” to cut hunger pangs and discussed their memories of abuse. They told of police sweeps that ended in jail. And they acted out scenes from young lives spent begging in the scruffy industrial suburb of Kalookan by day and sleeping in mausoleums of the rich at night.

Boldly unconventional schools such as Kalookan’s may offer salvation for these street kids--and not only in Manila. At a time when as many as 100 million children worldwide are largely homeless and on their own, the World Health Organization and many child welfare groups are betting that they can get the toughest cases off the streets by at least temporarily leaving them there.

“The usual response has been to focus on getting kids off streets, which means putting them into institutional care. But that costs a fortune and tends to be quite repressive without ultimately solving the problem or accommodating a child’s needs,” said Dr. Andrew Ball, director of WHO’s Street Children’s Project in Geneva.

“The result is that street children run away, and ultimately a cycle is created which makes them more hard-core and resistant to help.”

Rather than wait for children to seek help, the project takes classes to the vacant lots, cemeteries and parks that are home to street kids. To prevent the children from growing into adult drug users, prostitutes or criminals, the program seeks to wean them from the streets and provide tools to help them integrate into society.

Rights Along With Literacy

Bernardo’s class teaches children’s rights along with literacy. “Many kids think of themselves as malas ako, or bad luck. They accept this kind of life as their due,” said Teresita Silva, local director of Childhope Asia, an independent advocacy group that administers the WHO program in Manila.

“One of the first steps is to change their thinking, to help them feel some sense of worth and to give them a sense they can do something about it.”

That critical first step can also be the most frustrating, however, for it means waiting for children to make decisions themselves.

Based on an approach tried by UNICEF in Brazil in the mid-1980s, WHO launched its pilot project in Manila, which has an estimated 60,000 street children, and six other major capitals in 1994. An advantage, child advocates say, is that the program is a realistic approach for countries where problems overwhelm limited resources.

The program is now used by local groups in more than 20 countries, from industrialized Australia to underdeveloped Zambia.

Operating through about 70 government and nongovernment agencies, the WHO project is among the world’s largest coordinated efforts. Yet it reaches only about 20,000 street children.

Although poor countries account for the largest share of street children, the fastest-growing problems are in formerly Communist countries such as Russia and the Czech Republic.

Millions of new street children have been produced by civil unrest in countries ranging from Bosnia-Herzegovina to the former Zaire and by the fraying of the social safety net as formerly Communist nations shifted to free markets.

The WHO project targets hard-core cases such as Bernardo and the Kalookan youngsters, who are among the world’s street children known as “throwaway” kids. They have few or no links with relatives and usually have serious physical or psychological problems.

Some admit to occasional crime, from picking pockets to prostitution. Survival instincts often result in fights, a recurrent problem for Bernardo despite his age and size. Many are filthy, their feet blackened and hardened from going without shoes. A few have open sores. An instruction manual warns street educators: “When the child touches you, do not wipe it.”

For these kids, traditional solutions rarely work. “They’ve often been on their own for years,” Ball said, “and going from the freedom of the streets, though rough and dangerous, to an institution where they have to get up at a certain time, eat certain food and participate in certain activities isn’t conducive to solutions.”

The remaining 75% of street children work or beg and usually still have contact with relatives.

Although progress is piecemeal, the WHO model has begun to make inroads. In Manila, 23 of the 40 street children who live in Kalookan’s cemetery have left over the past year to find long-term help or jobs. The program has put Bernardo’s life on the cusp of hope.

“He has not missed a session since he started coming a year ago,” said Elma Lozana, a young Childhope social worker who coaches and ministers to the Kalookan group four times a week. “He’s come to the conclusion that he doesn’t want to stay on the streets.”

That realization often shows up first in art, a part of therapy. In a small cemetery clearing, the children drew what they want out of life on oversized sheets of paper. Bernardo drew a home with swings and siblings, food, toys and a real bed.

“The next step is getting him to do something about it,” Lozana said later. At the moment, Bernardo’s home is the crypt of Vicente Osete.

The WHO project is also distinctive in the way it tackles drug use, a rampant problem among “throwaway” kids. Bernardo began sniffing “rugby” when he was 7. Several others from the “family” of street children with whom he lives admitted to having sniffed for two hours or more that weekend.

“Most programs feel they can’t deal with those street kids who are into drugs,” Ball said. And traditional drug education or scare tactics have proved “rather ineffectual” and “often naive.”

Fernando Bainto, a Childhope street educator and a pioneer in the WHO project, made rounds on a recent Sunday morning, searching for his students along the sea wall near the U.S. Embassy, under the palms of Manila’s main boulevard and on the paths near McDonald’s and Texas Chicken. Some were still coming out of a stupor from a night sprawled on sidewalks after using “rugby” or a solvent called shabu, the latest fad here.

In Paco Park, a cemetery garden for Spanish victims of Manila’s 1820 cholera epidemic, Bainto assembled a dozen boys into a circle. They included Boyboy Vueno, 10, and Edwin Vueno, 12, sun-hardened brothers in torn shorts who have been on the streets and using drugs since their mother died and their father was hit by a car three years ago.

Bainto began by asking them to introduce themselves with a positive word. Amid laughter, one said he was handsome. Another was “sweet.” A third was a good friend. Then a gangly youth said he had yellow skin. Another was “naughty.” Another was “a monkey.”

“We try to encourage them to see what is good rather than all that is bad and to regain worth lost at home,” said Nancy Agaid, a young mother and Childhope street educator. “You can immediately tell who has been here before and who is new.”

Bainto guided the kids into talking about their lives and drug use. He had their trust in part because he is a former street kid who worked from ages 12 to 16 as a pushcart boy, carrying heavy parcels for vendors and shoppers.

“Today I would be lucky to have a job as a janitor or messenger if I hadn’t been part of a program like this,” Bainto later reflected. A full-time street educator, he is also a sophomore at Philippines Christian University majoring in social work.

Bainto divided the boys into groups to chart the drugs they use. New trends included inhaling fumes from soaked carbon paper and drinking a shake of menthol candy pounded into powder mixed with a soft drink.

“Street kids are junior chemists. They create these concoctions themselves,” Agaid said.

WHO and other international groups gain raw data about street children’s drug use and other aspects of their lives from sessions like the one at Paco Park. Kids talk because punishment is not part of the process.

Inhaling Garbage Fumes

In Zambia, the latest fad, called jenkem, is inhaling gases of raw garbage after it has been in containers for several days. In Egypt, street kids inhale fumes from burning sedatives; in Morocco, they inhale fumes directly from car exhaust pipes.

“The idea is to deal with why they take drugs and what happens when they do. Then we talk about how it has affected their lives,” Bainto said. “Most eventually realize using drugs is not wise. Once they want to stop, we talk about ways to do it.”

The structure is casual. Morning discussions are mixed with games and food. A hot fast-food meal is a major enticement, as is clean used clothing handed out after class.

“Street educators are not presented as teachers but as advisors. That’s important because intervention should be invisible,” Ball said. “Counseling needs to be part of normal day-to-day activities or contacts so kids can accept it as part of normal behavior.”

During one break, Bainto played checkers with Boyboy while an older child cleaned the sores on Edwin’s legs. As they train, street children are gradually given responsibilities. Some become “junior health workers” who treat simple ailments and contact clinics when their friends develop serious problems. Others become “junior street educators” who function as teachers’ aides during classes on literacy or child rights.

“After kids have been on the streets more than a year under the toughest circumstances,” Agaid said, “we have only a 40% chance of getting them off. But even if they don’t come in, at least they have acquired skills to improve their lives.”

A Race Against Time

The process is often a race against time--and government authority. Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos pledged in February that children would be off the streets by the year 2000. But here and elsewhere, child advocates say, officials too often deal with street children as criminals rather than as victims of social problems.

Despite constitutional guarantees and informal agreements with social workers to protect street children, police in the Philippines still regularly pick up kids for vending violations, vagrancy or drug use.

The WHO program varies from country to country. Social workers and former street children work the slums of Manila and Cairo. In Nicaragua and Honduras, street educators include small vendors and women in local markets, where street kids cluster during the day. Psychologists are used in built-up areas of Rio de Janeiro and Prague.

What each country has in common is a community-based program designed to move children gradually from a mixture of alternative education and entertainment to regulated care-giving and eventually long-term training and a life off the streets.

The approach is increasingly being tried outside the WHO umbrella.

In Cambodia, which has an estimated 10,000 street children, an independent group called Friends tries to help kids like Yorn Yim. She has been on the streets since shortly after her widowed stepmother sold her at age 13 to a brothel for soldiers. Within three months, she escaped. For the next four years, she was a beggar, a child smuggler of food and goods across the Thai border and, when she grew too big, a prostitute.

Yorn Yim’s life began to turn around when street educators told her about Friends’ “red brick house,” a day home that opened this year where, for 40 cents, street children working at night get two meals, a day bed, access to a doctor, HIV prevention training and counseling by psychology students.

“We refuse freebies. When they pay, they take it more seriously. They want their money’s worth,” said Sebastian Marot, the French founder of Friends. “We also offer alternative education, but they must request it. Imposing doesn’t work.”

Yorn Yim, now a shy 17-year-old with a boyish bob, started sitting in on nonformal classes. Egged on by a boyfriend, she still turned tricks at night.

Eventually, she said with a wide grin, “I decided I wanted something more.” Yorn Yim now spends days at the bustling Friends training center in Phnom Penh learning to sew and design apparel, which qualifies her to live in the full-time residence center. She has given up both the streets and her boyfriend, and she wants to become a tailor.

Yorn Yim is one of 15 prostitutes who are working their way back into society this year via Friends, whose programs now reach about 500 kids in Phnom Penh.

Sponsors concede that they are helping only a fraction of the world’s street children.

“We recognize there are millions out there. We recognize we’ll never be able to provide shelter for all of them,” said the WHO’s Ball. “But what we can try to do is create the best possible care and alternative opportunities. And over time, this approach produces solutions that appear to be lasting.”