Assisting marginalised and disadvantaged people to exercise universal human rights and freedoms. Check here for the latest news on this project. In Kupang, the capital of West Timor in Indonesia, the number of street children has increased dramatically in recent years.
The annual monsoon, and the rains it brings, has been arriving later and later, so the food growing season is shorter, and increasingly families are running out of food before the following year's rain arrives. Many children, especially boys, who are thought to be less vulnerable to the threats of life on the streets, are leaving homes in the mountains of central West Timor to fend for themselves as best they can in the city. THREE for All has met children as young as 5 years old selling plastic bags, carting vegetables, selling newspapers and doing other odd jobs in order to be able to purchase food and other necessities.
The children from rural Timor may return to their family homes for the next harvest season, but both they and the local street children have more and more tenuous relationships with their families the longer they experience the independence of employment, no matter how exploitative that employment may be.
Activities: Development and support of education and social programs for street children; action research; capacity building training and support; building village capacity and providing technical and financial support for village initiatives; case work: development of resources and networks for advocacy; child and family sponsorship and support; school building. Children from villages in the central hills of West Timor are leaving home in unprecedented numbers to become street children in Kupang.
This appears to relate to climate change, a shorter food growing season and higher food prices. Once in Kupang, the children become child labourers, sex workers and garbage pickers, with little opportunity to change their circumstances or return home.
