Juconi Ecuador 2007

A bit of an insight into our work. Sorry it's in Spanish but it's talking about the number of children who work on the streets in Ecuador - 1 million etc and showing some of the things that the kids do on the streets to earn money, e.g. entertainment at traffic lights and selling things on the streets of the richer areas.



It shows some of the sectors that we work in - particularly these are the southern sectors such as Fertisa and Isla Trinitaria, where I work on Mondays and Fridays respectively. The southern sectors are characterised by water and often people build up on stilts above the water and then they don't need to worry about illegally 'owning' the land which is the problem in the northern sectors of Guayaquil. The sectors are also characterised by violence, crime and extreme poverty which is evident from the poorly constructed houses and lack of roads in this video. Plus the south is particularly dangerous and you are much less likely to see people walking the streets and just being around than in the north. In fact, when I first went to the south on my second day at work with Juconi, I was quite overwhelmed by the sense of fear and tension that just hung in the air there.

The video was made to raise awareness about Juconi's work and the plight of the huge numbers of street working children in Ecuador, as well as give an insight into the therapeutic processes that Juconi psychologists put into place within the families, trying to deal with some of the problems, improving communication, getting parents to agree to allow Juconi to support their children to access education, supporting the family to gradually get their kids out of street working and breaking the cycle of violence, abuse and poverty in the long term.

Juconi's work, whilst highly intensive is hugely successful. The figures in this video are slightly out of date and the latest figures are that: 96% of the street working children have stopped working on the street -19% of which have found other, safer ways to work and 77% no longer work at all; 94% of children have returned to formal education and 90% of the families have managed to put an end to the physical, sexual and emotional abuse that existed in their families.

I hope this is interesting but if you want any further information please let me know.

Liv x