This week I visited a British NGO working in Guatemala City with children who live on the streets.
Street Kids Direct ( www.streetkidsdirect.org.uk ) is a British-run organisation which offers a ray of hope to children who live in the markets and on the streets around Guatemala City’s main bus station, known as “La Terminal”. Founded by the remarkable Briton Duncan Dyason, and funded (in the main) through charitable donations from the generous residents of his home town of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, Street Kids last year opened a new Centre a few minutes walk from La Terminal, a Centre which offers space, peace, tranquility and safety to the children who live in the area.
And of course those things – space, peace, tranquility and safety – are all totally lacking in their lives. The children come in off the streets and are greeted with great hugs from the Guatemalan and British volunteers who work there, before settling down to a session with a mentor, a cookery class, a computer class, or just to do their homework. The idea is to give them hope in life, to show them that there is a future away from the misery which otherwise surrounds them for every moment of the day and night. With skills, increased confidence, and a good meal in their stomachs they stand a better chance of resisting the advances from the gangs. The gangs recruit vulnerable children who live in conditions of great disadvantage in areas like La Terminal, and then subject them to a life of crime, violence and abuse.
My wife Carolyn and I have visited Street Kids’ Centre several times and got to know some of the children. But this week we were able to go with them into La Terminal itself to see where the children actually lived. We met a family who lived in a wooden storage unit with a tin roof at the back of the market. They invited us into their home. Ten of them lived there – three generations, including a tiny baby. They all slept on two shelves at the back of the unit, and sat around a small table to eat, study and live. They had no electricity, and the floor was earth. A recent fire had destroyed a whole row of these units, rendering them and many similar families homeless and forcing them out onto the streets. Street Kids had managed to fund the reconstruction of the units, giving the families once again somewhere to live, however humble. And the children attend the Street Kids Centre.
Street Kids is run by a group of dedicated volunteers from Guatemala and the UK doing amazing things to help severely disadvantaged children in Guatemala City. I can think of few better destinations for charitable donations this Christmas than Street Kids Direct.
I say a big thank you to Street Kids for inviting me to visit, and wish them the very best in the excellent work they are doing. The smiles on the children’s faces at the Centre really says it all.
