Alright, so this was a research paper that I wrote for a class last semester, but it's really informative and it will bring on some new things that perhaps people didn't know or thought about...here it goes. :)
Street children in the streets of brazil
Introduction: Brazil
Brazil, with a population of about 184 million people, is the fifth largest country in the world. It is also “the word’s tenth largest economy in terms of purchasing power and the tenth largest economy at market exchange rates” (Brazil, Wikipedia). One would think that with such economic prosperity, nothing could be wrong in a country like Brazil. However, even though Brazil is considered to be doing well on a market and economic level, the disparity between the wealthy and the poor in Brazil is one of the worst, with the richest one percent of the population controlling about fifty percent of the country’s income and the poorest fifty percent of the population only living on roughly ten percent. Poverty in Brazil stands out most in the various slums, also known as favelas, in Brazil’s metropolitan areas and some remote regions of the country that are hurt by the underdevelopment of the economy and are plagued by below par living standards. It is here that street children are born and then move out into the streets of the metropolitan areas.
Introduction: Street Children
“UNICEF has defined three types of street children: Street-Living, Street-Working, and Street-Family” (“Street children-What are,” 2003). Street living children, as the name implies, are children that live on the streets by themselves. These children are those who ran away from their families. Reasons for this will be discussed later. Street working children are those who fend for themselves, spending most of their time on the streets, but returning to their homes regularly. Lastly, street family children are similar to street living children, except that they have some support: their family. (“Street children,” 2003). For the most part, street children are those for whom the street has become their real home, more so than their family.
Brazil is considered to have one of the largest population of street youth in all of Latin America, and while reporting on the precise number of street children is difficult, “informed assessments suggest that between 7 and 8 million children, ages 5 to 18, live and/or work on the streets of urban Brazil” (Inciardi, & Surratt, 1997). With such a high number of children on the street during the day night, problems are likely to arise both for the public and the children themselves.
Introduction of Paper
This paper will explore some of the issues associated with street children. These will include reasons for which these youths are on the streets, the problems of street children which include social, physical, and psychological problems, how they survive on their own, and some approaches implemented by the public to deal with street children.
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Love yourself, but don't forget to love others too.
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