Tag Archives: Street Children

By Lucia Cuno

UNICEF estimates that the total number of street children in the world runs into the tens of millions. A study by Toybox, a Christian charity committed to helping street children in Latin America, found that in Bolivia there are over 2,500 children living on the streets in major cities such as La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz; that 20 percent of them had left home because there wasn’t enough food, 20 percent were abandoned, and 60 percent had been abused; that most street children are illiterate because they left school; and that 90 percent use solvents as a form of escapism.

Meanwhile, these children have legal rights that are supported by the Bolivian constitution, but which are not realized in the real world. This injustice is the reason for the existence of Kaya Children International.

Kaya is a small, grassroots, non-profit institution located in La Paz. It was originally called the Bolivian Street Children Project, and was founded in 1997 by Dr. Chi Huang, who at the time was training to be a doctor in Boston, U.S.A. with sponsorship from the Park Street Church of Boston. The organization seeks to promote the development and protection of, and to restore the fundamental rights of, children and adolescents who live on the street, are in high-risk situations, or are the victims of violence or abandonment. The first home opened in 2001 as an initiative of the Park Street Church; over the next years the project grew and became an independent non-profit organization. The leaders realized that the next stage of growth was not to just build more homes, but to engage in preventative interventions to enable families to raise their own children in a better way. In 2008, to mark this stage of development, the organization was renamed to Kaya Children International. Read More »

By Tracey Li and Natalia Zegarra

“I come from a poor family but I’ve had God’s blessing to be able to achieve my dream of becoming a professional. I see these children, teach them all the values that I’ve learnt, and tell them that whatever their dreams are for the future, they can come true.”

Lucia Cuno works for Kaya Children International (formally called ‘The Bolivian Street Children Project’), an organization providing vulnerable children with accommodation, education, and other basic needs, within a loving family environment in their center in La Paz. They are children who have been living on the streets, or have been abused by their families, or come from families that don’t have enough money to raise them. The word ‘kaya’ means ‘tomorrow’ in Quechua and reflects the organization’s goal of providing children with a brighter future. As well as material resources, the center also provides psychologists and teachers, such as Lucia. Read More »