Applying Social Development Principles to Street Children from a Christian Perspective

Why are they on the streets?

There are almost as many reasons why street kids are on the streets are there are individuals.  Some of them are orphans with no known family to care for them.  Some have families but have run away.  In some cases family situations are worse than life on the streets because of lack of food or abuse. As one 17-year-old girl said, “I have been a street girl since my father made a ‘woman’ of me. I carry on in the world but I am really dead.”  In some third world countries it’s not uncommon for parents or relatives to sell small children for money, either to beggar rings, slave labor, or the sex trade.  Children who escape from these situations often prefer life on the street to going back to their families who sold them.  And, of course, there are some who ran away simply out of rebellion.  These are more common in developed in countries than developing countries.

Dangers they face

Children on the streets face a myriad of dangers.  Girls especially face danger on the streets because they tend to be weaker and more vulnerable to sexual exploitation.  Additionally, girls seem more willing than boys to put up with abuse at home. When they leave home, however, they are less likely to return.  Many children are picked up by beggar rings.  As in Oliver Twist, the ring owners will force the children to beg or steal for them and give them little in return. One 8-year-old boy told about his treatment:

They beat me a lot because I’m not a good beggar. They injected me with some kind of medicine. After I received the injection, I could beg a whole day and night, with no appetite or sleep. Most of my friends received the injection too. My friend and I tried to escape many times, but it didn’t work. One day I was caught by the Thai police, who put us in detention and deported us to Cambodia. I don’t want return to Thailand, I can beg in Poipet. I am afraid that they will beat me if I can’t achieve the requirements.

Children face health dangers since they don’t have parental care, much less health care, and are exposed to the elements. Some aid practitioners take it upon themselves to give street kids haircuts, nail clippings, and other sanitary aids.  But the children are a menace to themselves as well, when they begin taking drugs.  One aid worker in Phnom Penh said that “79% of the kids are hooked on something. It used to be glue. But now glues is falling off in popularity. Yaba (methyl amphetamine) is now the most popular drug, with heroine making a huge climb in recent years." Street children also perpetrate violence on each in gang-style situations.  Most disturbing is the treatment they receive from the police, who often beat them, take bribes from them, sexually harass them, or even kill them.

Street Kids: Transformational Development Concepts

What theory of development can address both the physical and implicit emotional and spiritual problems of these street children?  How should Christian practitioners bring peace and physical and spiritual development to these oppressed?  For this survey I will take and apply some general transformational development topics found in Bruce Bradshaw’s book, “Bridging the Gap: Evangelism, Development, and Shalom.”  In this book Bradshaw introduces chapters on the developmental concepts of Shalom, worldview, contextualization, management, education, environment, economics, healing, powers, holism, and transformation.  Here we will examine how five of these can be applied to street children transformational development.

“Shalom: The bridge between development and evangelism”

Bradshaw’s concept of shalom is one of holistic blessing.  Non-western Christians, says Bradshaw, “esteem God not only for providing people with an ultimate purpose and meaning in life, but also because he provides for their every need.  In fact, God’s provision for their daily needs is more central to their faith than his providing an ultimate meaning for their lives.” This is a caution for Christian practitioners who view the physical as subordinate to the spiritual.  In addressing the needs of the street children, Christian practitioners must be careful to address the daily needs the children have.  It will be through meeting their daily needs that they will come to know God in a real way.  Therefore, practical ministries such as hair-cutting, shelters, food services, and vocational training are certainly legitimate for the Christian developer; and more than legitimate, they are necessary for communicating God’s character and reality in a tangible way to needy children.

“World views: Transforming our perceptions”

Bradshaw uses his chapter on worldview to address spiritism vs. modernism in mission work.  But I would like to point it a slightly different direction, more towards Bryant Myers’ concept of identity and story.  “The challenge to the poor is to recover their identity as children of God,” says Myers.  Many people look down on street children and view them as worthless, causing damage to children’s self-identity. According to a street child in the Philippines, “They think every child who lives or makes a living in the streets is a bad child.”  A UNICEF website comments:

The term 'street children' is problematic as it can be employed as a stigmatizing label - one of the greatest problems such children face is their demonization by mainstream society as a threat and a source of criminal behaviour. Yet many children living or working on the streets have embraced the term, considering that it offers them a sense of identity and belonging.

To truly help street children, Christian aid workers must teach them the full story of our world found in the Bible: how God created us good, how trouble came into the world through sin and the fall, how God still loves us enough to redeem all the lost children to be His own.  Only with this worldview will street children have the strength to rise above other’s expectations of them and their own self-negativity.

“Contextualization: Communicating Good News”

Bradshaw says, “Contextualization is an effort to understand the frames of reference and world views that people have developed to make sense out of their environment.”  This concept teaches that Christian practitioners should humble themselves and enter the world of the children.  They must first understand thoughts and environment of the children before they can help them.  After beginning to understand the children’s environment, the practitioners can then contextualize the Good News of the gospel into the context of the children.  For example, the story of Joseph might have special meaning as a boy who was forced to leave his family and survive in difficult conditions in a distant place away from his family.  The story of the Lost Son could possibly explain to them the concept of God’s true love—a Father who not only accepts back runaways and lost children, but runs to them with open arms and throws a party at their return.

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“Management: Facilitating God’s redemptive power”

In his chapter on management concepts in transformation development, Bradshaw talks about the management decision-making cycle.  When faced with a problem, he says,

1. identify the problem
2. examine the environment that perpetuated it
3. describe its impact on the environment
4. [look for] possible solutions to the problem
5. choose an approach to [solve] it
6. anticipate some possible [results of that approach]
7. implement one solution
8. evaluate the results (decide to accept the results or start the cycle again).

This is a useful tool for problem-solving in the street child context.  When practitioners face a problem, such as illiteracy, they should be reminded to examine the environment that cause the problem and think carefully through the implications of any solution.  To repeat an earlier statement from a World Vision report on children: “well-meaning measures can often have disastrous consequences.” 

“Education: Liberating and Empowering People”

One of the points Bradshaw makes in this chapter which may have special implications for street children is that of “involving students as active learners.”  Children especially benefit from interactive learning.  A World Vision evaluation recently made use of this concept in a study called: “Creating Space for Children’s Participation: Planning with Street Children in Yangon, Myanmar.”  The researchers wanted to evaluate their Street Children and Working Children Program. To do so, they trained street children volunteers in the art of interviewing, note-taking, and research, and empowered the children to write their own interview questions and use their own additional methods.  The result was that “staff members reported being extremely surprised and impressed by the ability of the children to participate in this process and moved by what they were able to learn.”  The chance to participate in learning and real-world research also “brought about a fundamental shift…in the way the children viewed themselves.”  As a 16-year old child in Rio de Janeiro expressed it after finishing some partipatory vocational classes: “‘At least now I feel like I’m somebody, even with no money, no nothing.”

        As Bradshaw points out, Jesus was a prime example of this sort of participatory teacher.  For one, he never wrote down his own teachings—he left this responsibility to his bumbling followers, thus empowering them.  He also addressed the why question in his teachings, constantly reminding his disciples and followers of their motivation for learning the truth (to be like a house built on the rock to face life’s storms, to prepare for his second coming, and so on). “He addressed their needs and actively involved them in his teachings.” In teaching street children, practitioners should remember to include them actively in the learning process with respect, to make the material applicable to them and constantly remind them of their motivation for learning.

From these samples we can see how Christian transformational development principles can be applied to street children development.  Other concepts in Bradshaw’s book talked about such topics as the environment, economics, and powers.  These further samples could be respectively applied as the need for children to care for their bodies and the city they find themselves in (environment), the need for children to value money correctly and learn how to earn it honestly and save it (economics), and the need for development practitioners to address the power structures that oppress or influence children (powers), from development agencies to police to government legislation, especially legislation addressing under-age sex exploitation.

Finally, implicit in every good theory of transformational development are the practitioners themselves.  To minister true change to street children, practitioners must themselves be changed.  To have the holistic healing effect of Christ on these needy children, practitioners must be also experiencing Christ’s healing and modeling it to their fellow lost children.

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Bibliography

Bradshaw, Bruce.  Bridging the Gap: Evangelism, Development, and Shalom.  California: MARC Publishing, 1993.

Children in Cambodia. Mith Samlanh Friends website.  <>

Creating Space for Children’s Participation: Planning with Street Children in Yangon, Myanmar. World Vision Canada website: <>

Gender, Human Trafficking, and the Criminal Justice System in Cambodia, published by The Asia Regional Cooperation to Prevent People Trafficking (ARCPPT).  Quoted on TIP in Asia’s website: <>

Graceffo, Antonio. “Rays of Hope on Dark Streets in Phnom Penh.” Mekong.net. <http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/rays.htm>

Here We  Stand: World Vision and Child Rights. World Vision Canada website: <>

Marimba, Toniel. Working with the Street People in Zimbabwe, Serving with the Urban Poor,  Yamamori, Myers, and Kenneth Luscombe, editors.  California: MARC Publications, 1998.

Myers, Bryant L.  Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development  New York: Orbis Books, 2004.

O’Gorman, Frances.  Charity and Change: From  Bandaid to Beacon.  Victoria: World Vision Australia, 1992.

Street Children. Consortium for Street Children website. <>

Street Children. UNICEF website: <>

Street Outreach. Stand Up for Kids website.  <>

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