Toybox - let the Street Children live!
Red Alert Appeal
Help save the street children of Cochabamba
When a child in Bolivia finds their way to the streets of a big Bolivian city like Cochabamba, they are desperately looking for hope.
Whether or not they find it depends on what happens during the first twenty minutes to two hours they spend on the streets. This brief period of time will determine whether the child lives and thrives or suffers and dies.
Tragically, right now, it’s likely that a child will either be enticed into a prostitution ring or will join up with a gang of ‘experienced’ street children. Faced with such a choice, these vulnerable youngsters have little or no option but to begin a battle for survival against the violence, intimidation, hunger and sickness that is a daily reality for street children in Cochabamba.
But all that is about to change…
We’re about to start a radical new project that will revolutionise what happens to children during those first crucial minutes on the street. So instead of a choice between frying pan or fire, children can escape the hardship of street life almost from the moment they arrive.
Our project will put local people who work on the streets of Cochabamba, together with church and project workers, on ‘Red Alert’ for vulnerable children.
People from church organisations and established projects will join with others such as market traders, taxi drivers, station staff and bus drivers to make sure that the children arriving on the streets are offered friendly help and a safe place to stay.
There are already several thousand street children in Bolivia, along with many others who work on the streets and may or may not have a family or home… if we can stop these numbers growing in Cochabamba alone, we will save hundreds of young lives from misery, drug addiction and the possibility of early death.
Over the next five years we hope to save over 5,000 children from being condemned to a life on the streets. To do this we are working with Viva Network, the church community, other agencies and the children themselves to establish and run this Red Alert Project. We are aiming to raise £446,400 or £89 per child we hope to reach. It’s a lot of money, but then a lot of lives are at stake.
Please be a part of this exciting life-saving project by sending us a gift for as much as you can afford.
If you can support us today your money will go towards this comprehensive and integrated programme of hope.
Your money could be used for training and funding church and street workers who will answer the Red Alert calls from local people so that children can be either reunited with their families or relatives or find hope with a new family.
Or contribute to providing short or longer term children’s accommodation, a day centre for abandoned children, training and support for foster carers, school materials and other resources.
Of course, this new project doesn’t mean we’re doing less work in Guatemala. On the contrary, everything we learn in Cochabamba will inform and improve our projects in Guatemala, just as everything we have done there has laid the groundwork for this new Red Alert project. Toybox is growing in reach and in size so that we can do more than we have ever done to improve and save the lives of children in Latin America. But we can’t do this without your support and your prayers.
While I write this to you, a little girl in an out-lying village may be wondering how to escape her home and make it to the bus station in Cochabamba. With your support now, we can make sure that when she arrives, someone working in the station will send out a Red Alert for her and she will never have to know the unhappiness, drudgery and danger of living on the streets.
We need £89 to help save a child a like this, please give as much as you can to help today.
Thank you and God bless.
Andy Stockbridge,
Chief Executive
Click here to make a donation using a secure on-line form
Alternatively, call 0845 466 0010
or write to:
Red Alert Appeal, The Toybox Charity, PO Box 660, Amersham, Bucks HP6 5YT.