A three-year British government grant of US$954,000 (UK £521,680) will help improve life for thousands of "street children" in Lima, Peru, according to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency-UK, which received the funds.
A three-year British government grant of US$954,000 (UK £521,680) will help improve life for thousands of “street children” in Lima, Peru, according to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency-UK, which received the funds.
The project will seek to raise awareness of child labor, and decrease its practice. It will build on a pilot project funded from Seventh-day Adventist Church “Ingathering” funds raised in 2003.
Raafat Kamal, director of ADRA-UK, visited the pilot project in February and met with the 22 volunteers working with street children.
“The team recently won an award from the president of Peru for their services to the street children of Lima. These are highly skilled people. In fact, eight of them are psychiatrists, and we are really grateful for the contribution they are making,” Kamal said.
According to Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Information, 63 percent of Peruvian children under 18 years of age—a total of approximately 1.8 million—live in poverty, and in an environment that does not support equitable or sustainable social development.
As a result, child labor in Peru is a real and deep problem. An official survey carried out by the country’s National Survey on Living Conditions indicates around 2 million children between the age of 6 and 17 are involved in some kind of child labor. The majority of working children can be found in urban areas where the younger ones support the family business by taking care of animals, looking after orchards, selling sweets, doing domestic work, or running errands. Those aged 14 to 17 usually work in street markets and other businesses where they polish shoes, sell newspapers and cigarettes, collect rubbish, or even carry out construction work.
“While I was in Peru I met 11-year-old Teodor,” Kamal said. “He had a deep cut in his head, and when he was telling me about his experience of living on the streets of Lima, he couldn’t look me in the eye. However, he has been placed in a Christian foster home by ADRA and is now happy. His new parents love him and he sings the songs that he was taught at our rehabilitation center. It’s exciting to think that the money we collected last year had a direct effect on Teodor’s life, and it’s even better to know that the project that was started with that money is now going to be greatly expanded by the new money.”
Already this year ADRA-UK has secured three grants from the European Commission for projects in Nepal, Peru and Kazakhstan, totalling US$2,897,830 (UK £1,583,700).
