About 5000 children lives on the streets of Lima and the number are increasing. Sometimes they don’t have a choice, as they have lost their parents or other care persons in their life. Many times thought, the child chooses to leave their home. There are many reasons why a child chooses to live on the streets. It can be because of hard violence in the family, psychically or psychologically, ore that the child is being send out to work, only to be allowed home when they have earned a big enough amount. Some of the children even are being sent out in prostitution ore other damaging trades. The thing they have in common is that these children come from more or less dysfunctional homes and from families not applying the children what they need, like love, education, and food.

 

On the streets they maintain life by working in different ways. A way to earn money on the streets is to sell caramels. Another way is to play music in the busses of Lima. The amount they earn is for most part very poor, but sometime a child can earn enough to rent a room. The children have a good solidarity, but they wonder around in groups, and fights between different groups can also be an issue.

 

 

The life on the streets is hard, as drugs, deadly sickness and crime is a part of the everyday life. A street child have many things against them, their government, the police, the older people on the streets that persuade the younger out in crime ore prostitution, the pushers who sell them drugs. It is not jet a normal standard in Peru to help these children, and many people still see a thief instead of a child in need of help.

 

Prostitution amongst the girls living on the streets is a big problem. They are been introduced to the trade from older girls living on the streets, the pimps ore sometimes their family. A girl in her 12 – 15 can earn about 80 – 100 soles (26 – 32 dollars) and a virgin can be paid up to 200 soles (65,3 dollars). This is a lot of money, and with no other choice, it is a way of life for many of this young girls. As they get older, though, the prices fall dramatically and a woman in her early 20 can only earn about 20 soles (6,5 dollars). It is not only the money and a place to sleep for the night that drives these children to prostitution. Even the contact with another person and the feeling of been needed and special, perhaps even loved for a little while, can be additional for these kids, and can therefore be a reason why it is so hard for the girl to change their way of living.

 

Illness is another big problem for the children living on the street. Tuberculosis for example is an illness in growth amongst the children. The medication curing tuberculosis is free, the children just need to pick it up at the hospital to times a week, but living a “from day to day life” on the street, dos that many do not get the medication they need. Many of the hospitals will not attend a child or other persons living on the street with tuberculosis, as they are too ill. This forces the sick kids to sleep elsewhere – in the streets or in poorly on-day-rented rooms where up to 20 persons, children or adult, sick or well, share a little room. Maybe they are not sick when the start living there but they may be afterwards. Their way of life dos not help on their condition. First of all there sleeping arrangements, their poorly intake of food, but also the intake of drugs do not at all help. The most common drug abuse amongst the children is inhalation of glue, and this can have a direct influence on the illness, but also the influence the drug has on the child has damaging effects as a child taking drugs can not take responsibility for bettering their illness.

 

Despite the different struggles of their every day life the children is still children: they love to play, joke with each other, go to the beach and being with their friends. They are just like every other child despite the fact that they don’t have a life and the opportunities like many children have to day. Their dreams of the future is also somehow different from many, dreaming only of a place to live, food on the table every day and a family to love.