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Street and Working Children and Young People

  1. Why Street and Working Children and Young People?

    The exact number of children who live and work on the street is impossible to quantify, but according to UNICEF it is likely to be in the tens of millions or higher. Some estimates place the figure as high as 100 million. It is an escalating concern that is more prevalent in poor nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Children living a street life are unprotected and exposed to extreme hardship, abuse, trafficking and hazardous work including prostitution.

    In 2004 there were 218 million children engaged in child labour, excluding child domestic labour, and an estimated 126 million children aged 5-17 were engaged in hazardous labour. It is also estimated that children represent 40-50 per cent of all forced labour, meaning that approximately 5.7 million children are trapped in forced and bonded labour.

    The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that more girls under the age of 16 are in domestic service than in any category of work or child labour.

  2. Our Goal

    Our goal is to help children living on the street and doing hazardous work to thrive, protected from violence and abuse, and have support to graduate into adulthood with a good education, ‘life skills’, employable skills and a sense of self-worth.

  3. How we can best support change

    Comic Relief believes that long-term, sustainable change in individual children’s lives and wider structural change fulfilling their rights can be achieved by:

    • Meeting the immediate needs of children and linking them to mainstream services that can contribute towards their access and long-term retention in formal and non-formal education, healthcare and employable skills.
    • Protecting children from abuse, (e.g. economic and sexual exploitation, violence, neglect, doing and being drawn to hazardous work and stigma and discrimination) and addressing root causes by mobilising all duty-bearers.
    • Supporting families of children to have increased, stable, secure income and enabling them to better care for their children.
    • Supporting an integrated approach through effective collaboration to meet children's priority needs (protection, education, health and well-being, employable skills, family reunification and reintegration within communities).
    • Engaging with all duty-bearers such as families, employers, communities and government, including law enforcing agencies to take responsibility for children’s overall well-being, improving policies and practices at the national, regional, district and community levels.
    • Ensuring children’s right to participate in decision-making processes that affects their lives.

  4. Outcomes

    Comic Relief wants to know that the projects we fund are bringing about changes in the lives of poor and disadvantaged people. We call these changes programme level outcomes, and define them as the ‘intended or unintended effects or changes to people’s lives that happen as a result of the project or organisation’s activities’.

    During the period covered by this strategy, we anticipate that the lives of street and working children will be transformed as follows:

    • Street and working children realise their rights to services (e.g. health, education), resulting in improved health, educational attainment.
    • Children are living better protected from abuse by all duty-bearers resulting in children living free of fear and with greater opportunity to fulfil their potential.
    • Children and families have increased and more stable incomes resulting in greater livelihood security and the ability to protect and support their children.
    • Children are more confident and organisations and duty-bearers are more responsive to children’s aspirations as a result of increased participation of children in decisions affecting their lives.
    • Demonstrable evidence of reduction in stigma against abused children resulting in effective reintegration of those children into community life.
    • Improvement of policies and practices at the national, regional and district level ensuring the rights of children, particularly regarding access and long-term retention in formal and non-formal education, accessible basic healthcare and juvenile justice.

  5. Where we will fund

    The new strategy for 2008-12 will focus on countries and regions where we already have a strong track record of funding work and where we can further build our knowledge and expertise as a funder. We will fund work in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent (India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), and five countries in Latin America (Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia). We will consider work supporting those outside of these named regions and countries in South East Asia and Latin America if they are particularly innovative or represent an opportunity to inform our learning across the grants portfolio.

  6. Who we will fund

    We will support children and young people who live unsupported on the street or who are doing hazardous work. We are particularly keen to reach out to those street and working children at risk of being sexually abused, exploited and trafficked, who are employed as domestic workers and at risk of exploitation, abuse and trafficking, those who are subjected to slavery or servitude and bonded labour, who have been severely stigmatised (e.g. through harmful traditional practice, as survivors of abuse or through former association to fighting forces) and rejected by their communities. In addition we will also support children and youth who are at high risk of being drawn to street living, doing dangerous work or being sexually abused, exploited or trafficked.

  7. Download the full Street and Working Children and Young People programme strategy document