Street Working Children taken care at “Drop in Center”

Reported by Pyae Sone Nay Win + Naing Naing Oo Translated and Edited by MYA

About 50 street working children have been taken care each day at temporary shelter during day time at the “Drop in Center”, it was learnt. The day shelter dubbed as “Drop in Center” is situated in Pazundaug Township in Yangon Region, which was established since 2008. The children coming into the center were facilitated with personal hygiene, provided breakfast, taught non-formal education, imparted knowledge on mental, social and environment matters, and also fed day meal, it was learnt. U Myint Swe, the founder of the day shelter said, “The opening of temporary day shelter as “Drop in Center” is meant for the street working children who were deprived off formal education when other children are attending normal schools. We opened up the shelter for the helpless children who can come to the center anytime of the day when they are free. There are 75 registered children at the center. Normally 50 children come to the shelter each day. Around 9 am in the morning, the children appeared at the center. They are welcomed and given talks with topics beneficial to them. They left the shelter around 2 pm in the afternoon. As the center is established as day care shelter, we are not in a position to accept the children at night time.” With the aim to ease the burden of the children from heavy work, they are allowed to take rest at the center. Moreover, their guardians were provided with microcredit loans to enable them to do small scale business. Furthermore, some children were assisted with one year school expenses if the children were eager to attend school. Some of the kids were provided with vocational training courses. U Myint Swe added, “Due to various reasons, the children were on the street working odd jobs. They have to walk up and down the narrow streets and back alleys doing all sort of jobs. They face difficulties in encountering dogs and some landlords shouted at them to back off. They did not want to engage in such odd jobs. When they reach the age of adolescent, they felt nervous and shy. They wanted to take up stable job.  That was the reason that we are providing them with some vocational livelihoods such as tailoring, sewing, hairdressing, car body repair job. We arranged them on their interest. We have opened up tailoring shop for them.” The day shelter is accepting children between the ages of 6 and 16, and one more “Drop in Center” was established in Pathein Township in January 2011, it was learnt.