“At the very centre of a street boy's life is his mother, and what went desperately wrong in his home. The mother in most instances is a victim. Victim of the repeated abuse of one man and then another in her life. Men who have used and abused her and who have ultimately left her with a growing number of children. She sees herself reflected in her girls and sees her boys, whom she loves, growing up to be like the men in her life.

The current man wants her. Not her kids. He will father a child or two and then start mistreating the boys.

He may succeed in driving them into the street or he may leave them all. A free man! The mother is left to feed them all.

All this against a background of abject poverty. The proverbial overloaded lifeboat. One more and we all sink. One must go. The older boy, maybe only 6 or 7. If anyone will survive alone, it will be him. So he must leave and live his life alone, abandoned in the streets of a city which detests street boys. He becomes the victim now. Not only of a brutal stepfather but of many others. The police in particular. They are regularly caught, beaten, and often tortured.

The Street Children's programme reaches out to such young people, as they are found on the city sidewalks. It provides friendship, care and education”.

Paul Clark, SU Peru