Street kids of Mexico. Sammy.

One of Latin America’s biggest problems in the steadily growing population of street children. They are often young children between the ages 5-16 that have usually been abandoned by their parents (because the parents couldn’t afford to feed them), or orphaned (because the parents couldn’t afford to keep themselves alive.) Officially street children are defined as minors who either earn a living by working on the streets or as children who reside on the streets for full, or part-time.

- Street children often do random little jobs like entertaining (See below) to make a living, though they usually aren’t very successful.

It has been estimated that there are 40 million (40,000,000) street kids world wide, and that 25 million (25,000,000) of them can be found in the streets of Latin America. (UNICEF, 1981) And that is an old estimate so the number of homeless street kids has probably risen over the years. Supposedly Brazil and Columbia are the most effected by it, though Mexico suffers greatly from it too, especially in the border cities were tourists are often present. Mexico at this time was estimated to have 1.5 million (1,500,000) children working the streets, and the problem is growing rapidly.

These kids live in useless old pipes that provide little shelter against the bad weather. Many others don’t even have this much for a shelter, most sleep in doorways, and in makeshift cardboard lean-tos. Those often times get blown away or destroyed by the shop owners near them.

Often times street children are picked up off the streets by people who sell them into the sex industry or become used in slave labor. They are also brought into the gangs an offered protection that they never actually get. It is a problem much like the child soldiers. In the gangs the kids are used as drug runners and sometimes as killers. No one expects a small sickly looking kid to pull out a knife and stab you. These kids usually have no way out of the life that they have and usually and up dying before they reach 21.

Street Music for Street Kids This was a free event that played lots of amazing music committed to raising awareness of street kids in Indonesia, though street kids are still a problem around the world.