Our Objectives
Children matter
Our philosophy is that children matter. Guided by the basic tenets of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), we believe that all children have the right to life, survival and development, shelter, the care of his or her parents and access to the highest attainable standard of health and facilities for the treatment of illness.
We believe that all children have the right to an appropriate education (and particularly the right to free primary education) which takes into account the need to teach children life skills and to prepare them for the workplace. Children have the right to be protected from economic exploitation, sexual exploitation and abuse, and to have access to adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water.
By offering street and other vulnerable children and young people access to these opportunities, it is possible to break the cycle of poverty and violence into which many become engulfed, and to help them become responsible and productive members of their communities.
Long term support to local partners
The ethos of our work is to provide long term core support to all of our partner projects. Ensuring that projects have the necessary resources to keep going is the most important thing we can do for them. It means that children are fed, have a bed to sleep in, clean clothes, medical care, education and hope for the future. It enables projects to focus on caring for the children, rather than worrying about where resources will come from. It also means projects do not have to face the constant frustration and sadness of reducing services, laying off staff, and worst of all, closing down and seeing children end up back on the streets.
Helping to train and build the capacity of local staff
Action for Street Kids works with local partners who all employ their own local staff. We believe that local organisations are the best placed to identify and to respond effectively to the needs of children in their area.
Our vital funding assists not only the project beneficiaries (i.e. the children), but also provides training and mentoring for the local staff who work tirelessly to assist them, often going out into the streets to make contact with the children and risking their lives in the process. Our dedicated project staff risk attack and threats as they take on drug and street gangs (our Outreach Worker in South Africa), are shot at by pimps (our Outreach Worker in Thailand) , and deal with the children who are high on glue or other drugs. In being willing to go out onto the streets and take these risks however, children's lives are saved and children are given hope.
