Street Children – Bangladesh
STREET CHILDREN – BANGLADESH Children in Bangladesh have to face many challenges. In Bangladesh over 40 million people are living below the poverty line and most of these families do not have own land. They are living and farming in flood-prone areas and face yearly natural disasters, inefficient agricultural technologies, low education, a polluted environment. These family did not get proper health services and is in limited employment. Undernourishment is the common issue for the children. 50 percent of children under age 5 are undernourishment.
Children are facing imperative problem with schooling. Very small percent of them complete their primary education. Among them only 40 percent girls complete their primary education. In this situation they need our help. Help the children…. This is my very small step to help the Street Children in Bangladesh. They need our help. So we should forward our good hand to help hem. For doing this kind of great job money is not only the solution, we need the people with good heart and I think you are the one of them.
I hope your cooperation to do something good for the children. So come on and cooperate with us with your good think, knowledge, even with a single word. Help the children…. If you are stuck for a few minutes at a traffic signal in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, you will probably see children rushing up to the windows of your vehicle. Some of these children carry flowers; some have a stack of books in the crook of their arms, some carry bundles of newspapers and some have candy for sale. They try their best to earn sympathy from commuters to sell their goods.
This painful scene is ubiquitous on the streets of Dhaka. These street children are known as Pothoshishu. The street is where they earn their living. The total number of street children in Bangladesh is estimated at 400,000. Almost half of these children live in Dhaka city alone. A very large percentage of these children are young girls. These female street children are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. On March, 2012 Unnayan Onneshan published a report titled “social connection of the street girls in the context of Dhaka city, Bangladesh” [pdf].
The research shows that the majority of the street girls (37. 50%) sell flowers for a living. 18. 80% of these young girls are forced into prostitution, 6. 25 % work in the clothing industry, 6. 25% become beggars, 12. 50% start as shopkeepers and 6. 25% are paper-hawkers. Almost half of these girls have a measly daily income of Tk. 101-299 ($1. 25-$3. 75). The daily income of 43. 75 % of the girls is Tk. 300 (US$3. 75) and above. But they seem to be the lucky ones, because 6. 25 % of the street girls earn less than Tk. 100 ($1. 25) per day.
Almost 45% of these girls do not receive any treatment from government medical facilities or clinics. 3 out of 10 of these girls have never been enrolled in any type of educational institution. Most women in Bangladesh are vulnerable to fall victim to abuse such as rape, murder, eve teasing, dowry and acid attacks. But the street children who spend their childhood under the open skies of Dhaka face such risks on a daily basis. This graph is taken from the above report, which shows statistics of violences inflicted upon street girls:
