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Street children represent the most disadvantaged and
marginalized sectors of society. Many
ran away from difficult home situations, often exacerbated by abuse and extreme
poverty. The children with whom the initiators worked with painted a grim
picture of the poverty situation of their families. Some of them had spoken of
considering it lucky if they were able to eat at least a meal a day. Levels
of stress in the family correlate squarely with economic circumstances. Studies
undertaken by experts to determine how mental health of those affected by economic
recessions indicated that job loss and subsequent poverty have been found to
relate closely with violence in families, including child and elder abuse. Poor
families have experienced much more stress than middle-class families. Besides
financial uncertainty, these families have more chances of being exposed to
series of negative events and would seem to live a life of bad luck including
illness, depression, eviction, job loss, criminal victimization, and family
death. Parents who have experienced hard economic times may become excessively
abusive and often the people at the receiving end of their abuses would be the
least powerful members of the family – the children. This was validated by the
children themselves in their stories they shared with their new found big
brothers and sisters.
To cope with the hard life in the streets, street children resorted
to crimes to survive and most often end up in jail. Prior to the passage of the Juvenile Justice
Bill in 2006, it was estimated that in 2005 over 4,000 children were in jails and
detention centers all over the Philippines – many of them mixed with adults. Children as
young as nine years of age were arrested and detained for many months, even
while awaiting the resolution of their cases. Most were charged with minor
crimes, such as petty theft, sniffing solvents, and vagrancy. One of the aims
of the Justice Bill was to remove children out of the criminal justice system
and to keep them out of adult jails.
Helping the children they took under their care that they
may not come into conflict with the law was a big challenge to the volunteers. They
talked with the parents and together they evolved a way to address the issue. With
no resources at their disposal, they sought the help of interested agencies to
help them out. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) granted
the parents of the children start-up funds to enable them to start small
business that t would enable them to earn some income to support their
families. DSWD also provided temporary shelter to some of t the kids who would
still need to be re-united with their parents. Some agencies also gave
scholarship grants to the children to enable them to continue with their
interrupted studies. The initiators were happy that their efforts showed
results.
They were jubilant with the outcome of their work but the
initiators knew that the problem of children in the streets could not be
sustainably dealt with if interventions would only be focused in helping children
already on the streets and not on strategizing for ways to prevent that from
happening. They believed that until the children would be freed from the prison
of poverty, abuse, discrimination and oppression, they would continue to find ways to escape from the walls
of those prisons. Again the initaitors
were up to another challenge. It was not enough to just believe. They must turn
their belief to action. Confident that they could do it, they set up an
organization that would help them put their ideas to work. The Tahanang Walang
Rehas (Home Without bars) Foundation, the forerunner of Children First, came into being. The name of the
organization spoke of their vision. A home without bars for all children.
