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STREET KIDS
SALESIAN PROJECT
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Ecuadorian economic and social conditions
A.
Impoverishment in Ecuador. According to information from national and international
organizations, more than 65% of all
Ecuadorians live in extreme poverty.
This means they are unable to satisfy their most basic human needs: housing, food, healthcare and
education. This impoverished
population, which is scarcely able to survive, is being gradually pushed into
an ever more profound deterioration of the human condition.
Poverty in rural areas is
especially dramatic and is tied to a lack of malnutrition, inferior education
and the impossibility of land ownership.
Conditions in the cities and
their surrounding belts of slums can be equally dramatic: entire neighborhoods of hovels, insufficient
or non-existent basic services, high rates of unemployment and underemployment,
the ejection of children into the streets, begging
All these conditions result in
an ever-deepening breach between the rich and the poor. This has led to a social crisis which
continues to grow more and more serious.
Corruption is pervasive at every level; a culture of consumerism is fast
replacing traditional values
Anti-social conduct, drug
consumption, a general lack of
tolerance and increasing violence are all signs of the instability of
the population. The practice of good
citizenship and social responsibility is limited or virtually non-existent
among our youth. They are, for the most
part, unable to see themselves as agents of change.
B. Ecuadorian children are most at risk in
the following areas:
1. Nutrition
and Health. Malnutrition and
undernourishment effect the majority of
Ecuadorian children. They limit their
growth, both physically and intellectually, and diminish their capacity to meet
social and economic challenges. One of
every two children presents symptoms of malnutrition.
Low
levels of health and nutrition are also a result of the lack of education among
parents, the deplorable housing conditions and the scarcity of clean water,
sewage lines and other basic services.
2. Education.
The educational system’s main problems are a lack of quality, equity and a
curriculum appropriate to national reality.
Furthermore, as the teachers unions have become increasingly
politicized, they have caused serious problems for the Ecuadorian educational
system. Our country has an absolute
illiteracy rate of 13% and a functional illiteracy rate of 40%. Academic failure is an important factor
leading to high dropout rates and increasing numbers of children ending up in
the streets.
3. The demographics of child labor and homelessness. It is not easy to determine the exact number
of children living in the streets. The
highest concentrations are in urban areas.
In 1990, estimates were that 700 children in Quito and 600 in
Guayaquil. In the last five years the
Salesian Street Kids Project reached about 870 children each year who were
either living in the streets or were at immediate risk of being abandoned to
the streets by their families. Most of
these children were in Pichincha
Province (Quito area); a smaller number were in Esmeraldas and Guyas Provinces ( Guayaquil and the northern
coast area). We also had groups in
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Imbaburra and Los Rios.
In our
country, there are more than 1,000,000 children and adolescents who are
economically active, working for more than 40 hours a week. Urban children work the longest
hours. Six of ten working children live
in rural areas and most of them are engaged in unpaid agricultural labors as
part of their family obligations.
In the
cities, children and adolescents work in informal commercial situations (for
example, as street vendors or shoe shiners) or as service workers; some are
domestic workers.
Self-employment
is growing rapidly, driven by the deteriorating salaries and underemployment of
adults in poor urban families. The work
of urban children and adolescents aids in maintaining minimum family
subsistence levels.
C. Youth
Labor. The situation of working
children in Ecuador merits special consideration.
1. Youth Labor and Education. There is a strong correlation between youth
labor and educational dropout rates. As
more and more children work, fewer and fewer are able to stay in school. As more than 50% of urban children work 30
or more hours a week, it’s only logical that a considerable number of them
don’t go to school, attend irregularly or perform poorly when there. But it is a mistake to presume that this
relation between work and poor educational outcome is universal. Studies of the subject have revealed that
some children who work are able to perform equally well or better than their
non-working peers. This seems to be
dependent upon the type of work, age and the guidance and support received from
families or institutions.
The subject of child labor and
education is an important national issue which revolves around two major
positions: one which suggests that special schools should be created for
adolescent boys and girls who work, and the other, which seems closer to
national consensus, proposes that we must demand that the existing educational
system recognize that working children deserve quality education and can take
responsibility for themselves if schools can respond to their needs
appropriately.
2. The Politics of Youth
Labor. With respect to youth labor,
there are various positions. The first,
or abolitionist position, is that children under twelve should simply not be
permitted to work at all, the second position holds that children have a right
to work just as adults do, and the third position regards youth labor to be
inevitable given the current socio-economic conditions which force children to
work persist so that child labor must be made as safe as possible for the
children involved until such time as it becomes unnecessary.
All of the studies on the
subject have affirmed that the majority of working children and adolescents
maintain ties to their families, go to school and contribute unpaid labor to
their families. These conclusions are
important because they demonstrate that there are opportunities to integrate
and strengthen family ties and scholarship within the context of child labor.
D. Cause and effect in the reality of homeless and working children. Street
children share the following common traits:
premature entry into the labor market, abandonment, hostility and
maltreatment from adults, broken family ties, lack of skills, undernourishment,
poor health, permanent psychological/emotional damage, illiteracy, academic
failure, drug abuse (especially inhalants), alcoholism, indigence, sexual
precocity and tendencies to become involved in prostitution. Once family ties have been broken, the
process of deterioration begins very rapidly.
The
causes of this situation are well known.
They include:
1. Structural Causes. The unequal development of society,
becoming ever more unjust and exclusive the unequal distribution of land and
the low levels of rural productivity which result in forced migration,
inadequate or non-existent s legislation governing labor, health and education,
monetary policy, economic recession, external debt and a high degree of
disorganization and the community level.
2. Immediate Causes. Reality shows us the following factors,
which influence the risk levels of working and street children:
a. Psycho-social family factors: disintegration or disorganization of the family, abandonment or
lack of care for children, escape from
home, migrant status, maltreatment and exploitation of children, a need to
provide income to the family by informal street work, deterioration of the
personality, lack of identity and self-esteem.
b. Socio-educational and cultural causes: Lack of a supportive peer group, crisis in
social and cultural values, and association with criminal groups, lack of
recreational opportunities. Another
group of factors in this area includes absolute or functional illiteracy,
academic failure or truancy, mistreatment in school, lack of opportunities for
vocational training while working or to acquire job skills, and the parents’
lack of education and training. All of
this makes a lack of civic or political consciousness inevitable as well.
c.
Socio-economic causes include: a high percentage of unemployment or
underemployment, growing impoverishment of the majority of the population, lack
of vocational training which responds to the economy’s need for specialized
labor, lack of fiscal honesty and responsibility in resource management, the
necessity of relying upon child labor for family survival. Finally, the lack of the basic resources for
a dignified life: housing, health and
education.
d. Causes, which spring from street life. Economic exploitation, membership in drug rings and gangs, sexual
exploitation as well as an overall deterioration of the human condition
provoked by the loss of any group offering emotional or psychological support:
families, communities, schools or labor organizations.
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