For many street children in Latin America, working is a daily reality in order to survive. Thousands of children spend many hours shoe shining, selling, washing buses, dancing, skivvying, involved in the sex trade, running errands for drug dealers – anything that will provide them with some money, however little.

You can help save them from the perils of working on the street

In 18 hours a child like Jose will earn just 60p

Condemned by poverty and family circumstances to earn a subsistence living on the streets, hundreds of thousands of children like 12 year old Jose earn less than a dollar (about 60p) a day for working up to 18 hours in some of the most dangerous conditions imaginable.

“I had to go out every day at different times because my parents forced me to sell drugs in the streets, but because I was little, nobody noticed me. If I didn´t want to go out they beat me really hard.” Jose – 12 year old drug dealer

Without their income, however little it may be, the families of these children would be even closer to homelessness and starvation than they are already. In a world where $1 is the difference between eating or going hungry, paying the rent or losing their home; escaping from the dangers and threats of working on the streets is just a dream.

Click here to see how you can help change the lives of children like Jose

A breadwinner at just eight years old

Maria and her family work on the streets selling grapes and ice creams. They all have to work to earn enough money for the family to survive. Maria is keen to study so that she can one day fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher, but working on the streets meant she didn’t have the time or the resources to attend school.
“We have to work because the money isn´t enough for us to live…”

A young working child in danger every day

If a child is working, eight, 12 or even 18 hour days, they are being deprived of the basic things that other children take for granted, such as time to play, education and a regular hot meal. Working children are often very damaged by their labours. They are exposed to toxic pollution, strong sunlight in the summer, severe cold in winter, they get knocked over, knocked about, raped and abused. They need more than food and schooling; they need love and hope too.

Click here to see how you can offer hope and a future to street-working children

Freed from work to be a child again

Jonatan’s story - 2008

Name: Jonatan
Age: 8
Occupation: Linseed seller from 2am until 7am every day. Milk shake seller from 8am until 8pm
Duties: To sell linseed and milk shakes to people at the bus stations and on the streets.
Responsibilities: To earn 50 cents day to help my grandmother pay the rent and to care for my 5 year
old sister
Work experience: Being scared all the time, being bullied by gangs, beatings from the police, being hungry, cold, exhausted, falling asleep and being kicked awake.
Dream: To go to school with my sister and buy food
every day

“I go out at 2 in the morning to work with my grandmother, we sell linseed oil at the bus station, we
finish at nine o’clock, and we return to where my five
year old sister is waiting for us to arrive; she stays
alone, sleeping, we leave her there because we are
sorry to bring her. After I return from the station,
sometimes I go out to sell milkshakes in the streets,
the money isn’t enough, my grandmother doesn’t
have any strength left. That’s why I go out to sell.”

Jonatan’s story - 2009

Jonatan comes to a Toybox partner street scheme three
times a week where he receives an education as well as health care, food and spiritual support. He told us
“My Grandmother says that it is nice that I attend to
the school because they have helped me with my
homework, they give me food.”

Click here to see how you can transform the life of a working street child like Jonatan

Bring hope to a child who is trapped by work

Toybox believes that every child has the right to a proper childhood and so we are working alongside our partner organisation, Viva Latin America, to change children’s lives. With your help, the street teams are working every day in the ‘work places’ of Bolivia, Peru and Guatemala. They offer hope and a future to children who would otherwise work themselves into further desperation and despair.

Click here to see how you can give these children hope and a future