Childhood is synoymous with parental love, family protection, the joy of discovering things, play activities, initiation into a harmonious social life. Unfortunately for thousands of children all over the world, this time of life is, or will be no more than a sad and dark souvenir that they should try to forget, which may prove to be in vain, once these children have become adults.

Street and working children often live in dreadful conditions and are victims of all sorts of abuse. Many of them suffer from various diseases due to these deplorable conditions. Many of them have hardly been to school or no longer go to school. If these children survive hunger, thirst, dangerous and badly paid jobs, prostitution, sexual abuse, diseases, exclusion, police harassement, problems with the law, imprisonment, drugs that are destructive and cheap, and household jobs little more than slavery, they will grow up to be either unalphabet or illiterate adults...

They do not know the joys of childhood and youth. Almost always left out of government budgets, only social welfare organisations, religious institutions and individuals cater to the urgent survival needs: food, shelter, clothing, health care, legal assistance, sanitation, protection against violence, undeserved repression, and the various abuses practiced in the name of the law. A bigger problem for their future is that they do not have easy access to school.

And yet, education is an individual right that all nations recognize. At the World Conference on Education for All, the international community recalled this fundamental right: "More than 40 years ago, the nations of the world, speaking through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserted that everyone has a right to education" (...). (Therefore), "Basic education should be provided to all children, youth and adults. An active commitment must be made to removing educational disparities which may exist towards certain groups. The poor, street and working children (...) should not suffer any discrimination in access to learning opportunities".

Jomtien Declaration (Article 3)

Education is the only way to help these children break out of the infernal cycle of poverty, struggle for survival in the street or servile jobs and ignorance.

UNESCO’s commitment to children excluded from education