Helping the Street Children in Metropolitan Jakarta

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The Street Children Inside the Metropolitan Jakarta

Dhiandra Verdine Amandanisa

Indonesia, BINUS International School Serpong, 10th Grade

Poverty, health and nutrition, and the lack of access to education are the challenges that are linked each other, facing us and become horrible nightmares for the government, and of course children at this time. And nowadays, those nightmares haunt Indonesia, Jakarta – the capital city – for exact.

The challenges are come up by the poverty. Within the poverty, malnutrition and the lack of access to education happened badly. Children, as the innocent parties, also have to feel the impacts. Poor children will become the poverty conservationists. Poor conditions in childhood will only lead to a slower cognitive growth, stunted physical and limited access. Jobs that can be achieved with low education is also very limited. Therefore reduction of poverty might be large and long-term impact when the roots of the problems of poverty such as poor nutrition, education, improved quality of life can be made ​​since the early.

No matter how many individual and anecdotal exceptions there may be, the fact remains that the children of the poor simply do not have the same opportunities as the children of non-poor. Whether measured by physical and mental development, health and survival rates, educational achievement or jobs, prospects, incomes or life expectancies, those who spend their childhood in poverty of income and expectation are at a marked and measurable disadvantage.

Economic and political conditions often make getting an education ‘impossible’ for children. Families may require their kids to work so that they have enough money to survive or even sell their children for labor, sex, or adoption because money is too tight. In other cases, obligatory school fees may prove prohibitive. Discrimination, attacks on secular schools, displacement as a result of war or persecution, and other conditions are often to blame.

Poverty and prosperity are the two words that opposing each other. Poverty shows the distress and unprivileged situations, while the prosperity shows a luxurious and affluent situations. Traveling Jakarta, everyone can see the luxurious cars like Mercedes-Benz or Hammer along the road, and at the same time, beggars raise their hands, asking for help. The contrast between poor and rich is very pronounced in this very interesting megalopolis. Despite a robust economic growth, Jakarta is still a place of poverty. There is no doubt that the poverty is an intractable problem in Indonesia. Problems associated with poverty is the effect of the poverty for the growth and development of children’s lives as they are called to work. In Jakarta, so many school-age children spend most of their time for begging and busking. Most of them started to be beggars and buskers since the age of under five. They were forced to leave the school for work, to provide themselves and help the family economy.

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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, has conveyed that there are a number of rights of children should be guaranteed and fulfilled by the state, which every child has the right to be born, to have a name and nationality  to have a family who loved and to love, to live in the community safe, peaceful and healthy environment, to get enough healthy food. The deprived of these basic children's rights causing the growth process of the children stunted.

One of the emerging social problems in Indonesia, especially in the Jakarta, is the increase of the children as beggars and buskers along the streets, even in the roads. According to the results of a survey of social welfare problems conducted by ...

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