Volunteering
The best way of finding out about the needs and resilience of street children, and what is being done to provide them with education, health care and opportunity, is to go visiting, or even better, volunteering.
Some people who have travelled in Africa, Asia or South America may already have bumped into the ‘street child’ phenomenon when accosted by children begging. Some will have seen children who may sleep on the streets or on railway platforms, sometimes in small tight-knit communities. Basic and easily visible work activities of such children include the collection of plastic bottles and cardboard for sale, working as washers-up in small restaurants, and organising car parking in crowded streets.
Visiting and volunteering
Both visiting and volunteering will probably involve you funding yourself.
You will also need to check out how well the host organisation is able to utilise volunteers, as unless they have a properly run ‘programme’ this can be a bit hit and miss. For example, the NGOs we support all operate in different ways, and many are not set up to accommodate volunteers.
There is one organisation that we know well who offer a variety of volunteering opportunities, and that is CENIT in Quito, Ecuador. Typically they have 40-50 foreign volunteers at any one time as well as local permanent staff, and it is ideally suited to Spanish students on their year abroad or who have just left university. See website: http://www.cenitecuador.org/em/volunteers/faq e-mail: volunteer-ofice@cenitecuador.org
During the coming months we are going to develop these pages on visiting and volunteering. In the meantime, if we can help with advice or suggestions, please get in contact, via: volunteering@sssk.org.uk
Ultimately, any decision about visiting or volunteering is down to the individual, and you need to establish for yourself with the host organisation that an arrangement or placement is appropriate for you. SSSK does not ‘send’ volunteers to particular organisations, and we don’t have the capacity to provide that service. Nor can we take any responsibility for members who wish to volunteer or to visit, so you’d need to organise your own trip. However, having said that, we may be able to provide some appropriate contacts, and do let us know how you get on as we’d love to hear about your experiences.
Note that individual NGOs will have specific criteria when looking for volunteers. Most obviously, this may involve speaking the appropriate local language and/or to be able to commit the right amount of time. We would also like to suggest that people look for the volunteering opportunities here at home with some of the development agencies, many of whom are working in relevant areas to tackle poverty and deprivation which lies behind the situation of many of the street children whom our NGOs seek to help.