South America

South America is the fourth largest continent. South America's economy is dependent on agricultural exports such as coffee, bananas, sugarcane, tobacco, and grains. The continent is highly urbanized, and Brazil boasts approximately one-half of the population. Most people on the continent live within 200 miles (320 km) of the coast, leaving the inner part of the continent virtually uninhabited.

Members

Action For Brazil's Children (ABC) Trust

Action International Ministries

Children in Hunger

Cutting Edge Theatre Productions

International Children's Trust

International HIV/AIDS Alliance

Jubilee Action

Latin American Foundation for the Future

Plan UK

Save the Children UK

SOS Children's Villages

Students Supporting Street Kids (SSSK)

Task Brasil Trust

Toybox

World Jewish Relief

Publications

After the Cameras Have Gone: Children in Disasters
A report on the long term effects of natural disasters on vulnerable children's lives.

'Being in Public:' The multiple childhoods of Mexican street children
Media typify young people on the streets as antisocial, violent and associated with organizedcrime and drugs. Policy makers respond with regulatory, surveillance and exclusionarymeasures. In contrast to these moral panics about ‘youth', ‘street children' tend to beseen as powerless, disorganized and vulnerable, especially when located in the developingworld, meriting of charity or welfarist policy. Working in Puebla, Mexico, we investigatedhow young people who work, and occasionally sleep, in public spaces construct theiridentities in threatening environments, and how they mobilize or are mobilized withinsocial and civic activity.

Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism
A research paper into the vulnerability of Costa Rica's women and children to sexual exploitation by foreign tourists.

Children At Risk in Brazil: A socio-political profile of the circumstances that put children at risk in Brazil's urban centres

Children in the Streets: Latin America's Lost Generation
This study presents an overview of the situation of street children and youth inurban Latin America. Findings from numerous studies throughout the region,including original studies by the authors, are synthesized. The authors suggestthat economic factors underlie the marginalization of vast numbers of LatinAmerican children. The result is the exclusion of many of the region's childrenfrom meaningful participation in society and its institutions.

Colombia's War on Children
An investigation into the effects of Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, government armed forces and national police on the lives of children and adolescents. The paper brings to light the association between the presence of armed conflict and the exacerbation of poverty, marginalisation and exploitation in Colombia's most vulnerable populations.

Cruel Confinement: Abuses Against Detained Children in Northern Brazil
A detailed paper on the experiences of street children in the justice system investigating the abuse suffered at the hands of the police and the deprivation of basic human rights in juvenile detention centres.

Exploring Connectivity for Street Kids in Latin America
A mid-project progress report for the Street Children Project. The Street Children project is about using the Internet to create links between streetchildren and others actors in society in order to help them solve their problems andcreate opportunities for a better life.

From Paper to Practice: An Analysis of the Juvenile Justice System in Honduras
This paper analyses the laws, policies and practice in Honduras for dealing with children in conflict with the law in light of International Minimum Juvenile Justice Standards and Norms.

From Street Children to all Children: Improving the opportunities of low income urban children and youth in Brazil
A paper that investigates issues facing Brazilian youth in the broader context of children's rights violations, without being restricted specifically to the street children population. It aims to report on youth who are vulnerable and lack key supports without actually being street children, but who are nonetheless at risk.  

Gender Dimensions of Child Labour and Street Children in Brazil
Gustafsson and Pyne review child labour and the situation of street children in Brazil from a gender perspective. The authours examine various dimensions of child labour by gender, including participation, intensity and type of activities; the relationship between child labour, education and future earnings; and the risks of child labour to health and wellbeing. They also summarize approaches to prevent and eliminate child labour and street children in Brazil.

Life Trajectories of Children and Adolescents Living on the Streets of Rio de Janeiro
This paper presents some of the research findings from a study of street children in Rio deJaneiro which was undertaken by the authors together with a team of street educators. Thepaper highlights the children's life trajectories in terms of their own perceptions andrepresentations and addresses key themes, such as the family, the process of going to the street and day to day living on the street. It discusses relationships with regard to the formation of groups and children's interaction with adults on the street, and the processes of identity formation on the street which includes the perception of self and of others. The children's perceptions of the positive and negative aspects of the street and their hopes for the future are discussed.

Life without Basic Service ''Street Children Say''
This study builds on the learning of Street Diary (Save the Children UK, 2001), giving theopportunity for a group of children to represent their own analysis of their situation. Itexamines the human and emotional dimension of life on the street. This is not astatistical or quantitative research but is representative of the feelings of children livingon the street about their lives and organisations working with them.

Networking for Policy Change: An Advocacy Training Manual

Organizational Diagnosis for Advocacy
When groups are considering advocacy, it is helpful for them to assess what advocacy actually can offer their organization, what some of the benefits and risks might be and what organizational barriers might influence their success.

Report of the Civil Society on the Situation of the Rights of the Child and Adolescent in Brazil
The objective of this report is to present the advances and retreats of the situation of the child-adolescent-youth in Brazilian society during the last ten years and, particularly, in the movements in defense of the child and the adolescent. It also intends to draw the attention of the international community to the serious violations of the rights of this group,in a country that has a poor history when it comes to human rights, especially those related to ethnic groups, gender, generations, etc.

SERVICE INSTITUTIONS FOR STREET CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
This study sought to describe Porto Alegre.s service institutions to street children andadolescents based on written documents produced by these institutions and the answers to a which arevery important developmental contexts for this population. The results showed that there are somecontradictions between the documents and institutional reality. This is due, mainly, to the fact that thedocuments did not follow-up on institutional changes, usually becoming obsolete. It is important toemphasize the relevance of the documental analysis, since this enables to understand a series of valuesand ideologies assumed by the institutions. Also, institutional aspects expressed in the documents arehistorically relevant, allowing for a better comprehension of the institutions, how they organize themselvesto work with issues about street children and adolescents.

Social and Historical Approaches Regarding Street Children in Rio de Janeiro in the Context of the Transition to Democracy
The social literature on street children, for the most part produced by NGOs, represents an effort to organize, disseminate and theorize this issue. Part of a democratic political-ideological territory, the analyses stress the socioeconomic aspects of poverty and social exclusion. Three basic themes can be identified: the family, high failure rates in school and child/adolescent labour. This literature gives us insight into one of the unpaid social debts that is a legacy of Brazil's 1964-84 military dictatorship: the plight of street children, that is, boys and girls who live in the streets or who make their livings through activities that take place there.The discussion must also take into account Brazil's dire economic crisis of the late 1970s. The article employs an interpretative perspective that stresses sociological, historical and cultural factors, without disregarding the economic factors that affect generalized impoverishment. It also underscores the special circumstances of the political transition from military rule to a constitutional state. The first civil government was empowered in 1984 and a new national law for children and adolescents was statuted in 1990. During this period (1984-90), antagonistic social and political forces have struggled to enforce numerous projects, in an environment where repressive authoritarian strategies for social control (the police and the justice system) have clashed with democratic propositions for full-time schooling and social welfare policies.

Space Notion and Children in the Street Situation
This paper explores aspects of the notion of space among the ‘street children' from aproject called the "Art and Life House", in São Paulo city, Brazil. As we know, thehuman being and its actions manifest themselves in their natural, social, cultural andemotional environment. In the "Art and Life House" I used the notion of space toinvestigate the children's reality, motivating them to learn more about the realityaround them, finding and describing meaning in their environment.

Street Children and Juvenile Justice in Nicaragua
A report produced by Casa Alianza Nicaragua in partnership with the Consortium for Street Children. It is the result of a two-year research and advocacy project working with local partners to examine the situation of the human rights abuses of street children in juvenile justice systems in six countries: Kenya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Romania.

Street Children of Bolivia
A short paper that gives a general overview of issues facing Bolivian street children, dealing strictly with 'children of the street' meaning those with no functional family support whatsoever. The paper introduces an organisation called the Bolivian Street Children Project which is committed to providing a supportive environment for street children with basic education.

Street Children: An Ignored Generation or Dangerous Criminals?
Thesis on the varying perceptions of street children in Argentinian society, with a specific focus on their marginalisation, exclusion, and their experiences of the criminal justice system.

Street Children's Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Study of Acceptance and Observance in Mexico and Ecuador
This paper offers a first template for assessing performance by national governments in guaranteeing disadvantaged groups of youngsters access to their rights, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Street children, who are among the most severely disadvantaged children of any society, are the particular focus of this paper.

Street-children and the Inter-American Development Bank: Lessons from Brazil
A report on the ongoing involvement of the IBD in improving the lives of street children, evaluating past initiatives and suggesting new strategies.

What Works in Street Children Programming: The Juconi Model
The paper introduces the Juconi Foundation (a joint venture between NGOs and UN agencies established shortly after the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child had been adopted in Ecuador) and its work in drawing attention to the plight of street children and facilitating their integration into society.

Working Kids on Paulista Avenue
2 In six weeks of field research on fourteen poor youth who sell services or products on Sao Paulo, Brazil's opulent Paulista Avenue, we explored their work, play, and aspirations, and childhood outcomes. Classifying the twelve youngest youth according to their work--as "squeegee" windshield washers or "sweets" candy and gum sellers--we describe their technologies, financial expenditures, earnings, and work lives. Comparing these twelve younger youth to the two older workers who supervised them, along with the few Brazilian longitudinal accounts of street youth, we seek to understand the longer-term prospects for young street workers. Placing our findings within two dominant theoretical contexts--the micro interactionist ‘new paradigm' and the structural sociology perspective--we explore the relevance of these perspectives for poor youth in Brazil for understanding childhoods and childhood outcomes. We call for a theoretical interface between theories that focuses on the micro-interactionist actions that children use to shape and control their surroundings and the structural realities that limit such control.

Resources