Street children are children who live on the streets and use the streets as their home or source of livelihood. They often come from troubled family backgrounds or are abandoned. There are different categories of street children in the Philippines, ranging from those who still have some family contact to those who are completely on their own. Street children face many health and legal problems and are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and even execution. Child prostitution, drug abuse, and sexual exploitation are common risks for street children.

1. STREET CHILDREN

2. WHAT IS A STREET CHILDREN?
• Street children is a term for children
experiencing homelessness who live on the streets of a city.
Homeless youth are often called street kids and street youth; the
definition of street children is contested, but many practitioners
and policymakers use UNICEF’s concept of boys and girls, aged
under eighteen years, for whom "the street" (including
unoccupied dwellings and wasteland) has become home and/or their
source of livelihood, and who are inadequately protected or
supervised.

3. • Some street children, notably in more developed nations, are part of a
subcategory called thrown away children who are children that have been
forced to leave home. Thrown away children are more likely to come from
working class and single parent homes.
• Female street children are sometimes called gamines, a term that
is also used for Colombian street children of either gender.
• Street children are often subject to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or, in
extreme cases, murder by "clean-up squads" that have been hired by
local businesses or police. In Western societies, such children are
sometimes treated as homeless children rather than criminals or
beggars.

4. WHO ARE THE STREET CHILDREN?
Street children are those children who, when they experience family problems,
hunger, neglect and domestic violence, escape from their homes and live part–
time on the streets. When they are settled and know street survival
techniques, they return at times to their hovels and shacks to visit their
families and bring food for their younger brothers and sisters. When they see
that the food they bring is not enough, they return to the street and their
brothers and sisters sometimes follow them, looking for the source of the
food.

5. • Children on the streets make up approximately 75% of the
street children in the Philippines. They work on the streets but do
not live there. They generally have a home to return to after
working, and some even continue to attend school while working
long hours on the streets.
ACCORDING TO THE "A BETTER LIFE" FOUNDATION,
THERE ARE THREE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF
STREET CHILDREN:

6. • Completely abandoned children have no family ties and
are entirely on their own for physical and psychological survival.
They make up approximately 5%-10% of the street children in the
Philippines.
• Children of the street make their homes on the street.
They make up 25%-30% of the street children in the
Philippines. They often create a sort of family with their fellow
street children. Some of them still have family ties, but do not
visit them and some even see these ties as bad.

7. STATISTICS
• The approximate numbers of street children in the different
districts of the Philippines are: Manila (3,266), Quezon (2,867),
Caloocan (1,530), and Pasay (1,420). Regional numbers are:.
• Luzon regional totals: 1,557 (highly visible), 22,728 (estimated
total)
• Visayas regional totals: 5,291 (highly visible), 40,860 (estimated
total) and
• Approximately 70% of the children are boys.
• Mindanao regional totals: 22,556 (highly visible), 138,328
(estimated total)

8. PROBLEMS FACING STREET CHILDREN
Health problems
• Street children are generally thin, untidy, undernourished, and
hardly equipped to survive the hazards of everyday living and
working on the streets. Some of the hazards they face include
sickness, physical injuries from motor accidents, street fights,
harassment from extortionists and police, sexual exploitation by
pedophiles and pimps, exposure to substance abuse and sexually
transmitted diseases.
Drugs and Substance Abuse
• The most common substances are inhalants, such as solvents, rugby
(a toluene-based glue) and cough syrups, followed by marijuana
and shabu. Marijuana and shabu in particular are shared with
friends whenever one of the group has enough money to buy them.
Some street children take drugs as often as once a day.

9. • Human rights groups said the killings have become an unwritten
government policy to deal with crime, largely because of an
ineffective criminal justice system and the tendency of the
authorities to take shortcuts in the administration of justice. The
execution-style killings are openly endorsed by local officials,
strengthening the long-running suspicion that the death squads
were formed by the government.
Summary execution of
street children
• Many street children were in danger of summary execution during
the Marcos Government era. In Davao City, 39 children in conflict
with the law have been killed by vigilante groups since 2001. Most
were killed after being released from police detention cells.

10. • Child prostitutes are used by foreign sex tourists and pedophiles, as well as
local people. Many street children are lured into prostitution as a means of
survival, while others do it to earn money for their families. A variety of
different factors contribute to the commercial sexual exploitation of
children in the Philippines.
• Rooted in poverty, as elsewhere, the problem of child
prostitution in Angeles was exacerbated in the 1980s by Clark Air Base,
where bars employed children who ended up as sex workers for American
soldiers. Street children are at particular risk because many of the 200
brothels in Angeles offer children for sex. According to 1996 statistics of
the Philippine Resource Network, 60,000 of the 1.5 million street children in
the Philippines were prostituted.
Child prostitution

11. Sexual exploitation
• Sexual exploitation is the sexual abuse of children and youth through
the exchange of sex or sexual acts for drugs, food, shelter,
protection, other basics of life, and/or money. Sexual exploitation
includes involving children and youth in creating pornography and
sexually explicit websites.
HIV/AIDS and STDs
• There is no HIV testing for children in the Philippines, but
approximately 18% of the street children contract sexually
transmitted infections (STIs).

12. Corruption
• Children are often jailed for things such as playing cards on a
sidewalk and held there until their family can pay off a bribe to
corrupt police.
Charities
• A number of charities are active in helping children in jail in the
Philippines.
• Preda Foundation visits the jails on a regular basis and hands out
food and medicines.

13. Charities
• A number of charities are active in helping children in
jail in the Philippines.
• Preda Foundation visits the jails on a regular basis and
hands out food and medicines.
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