How can we get communities involved in projects for street children?

1. Ednica (Educación con el Niño Callejero, Ciudad de México)
   This NGO trains local networks who are working with street children. Ednica selects a particular NGO in a community that has street children as a community partner, and trains its leaders. For a while, Ednica works together with the NGO. Finally, Ednica maintains a connection with the NGO but only in an advisory role. In this way, Ednica teaches local people (those with small businesses, parish priests, street sellers and and people living on the streets) how to improve the lives of poor children.
   Contact Carmen Echeverría <ednica@laneta.apc.org>
   
   
2. Asociação Comunitaria Monte Azul (São Paulo, Brasil) constructs community networks inside the favelas which work to discourage children from wanting to live on the streets. They have also created community kindergartens which offer technical training, family therapy and special activities for children.
   Contact Renate Keller <Renate@monteazul.org.br>
   
   
3. Proyecto Miguilim (Belo Horizonte, Brasil) is a city-run programme which serves to link community groups while functioning as well as an NGO and providing funding to different shelters and other local programmes. One of their most interesting activities is their work with the local police: there is now a special squad in charge of cases relating to street children, focusing on their human rights and ways to get them off the streets. This programme has become a model for other police departments in the city. ACJ (Bogotá, Colombia) has also achieved success by following a similar model, although it is only funded by private sources.
   Contact Marcio or Marcos Aníbal at Miguilim <Miguilim@pbh.gov.br>
   o a Leonor Avella de la ACJ, acjbta@col1.telecom.com.co
   
   
4. Fundação Abrinq (São Paulo, Brasil) organises a network of merchants, private individuals and NGOs working for children´s rights. The NGOs thus receive funding for their work and the merchants benefit from good public relations.
   Contact Itamar Batista Gonçalves <itamar@fundabrinq.org.br>
   
   
5. La Municipalidad de Mendoza (Mendoza, Argentina) abandoned its old system of shelters and street outreach in favour of supporting local NGOs working in outlying districts of the city. In one year, they successfully reduced the number of children living on the steets by 80%.
   Contact Sergio Reynoso <Serfareynoso@hotmail.com>
   
   
6. Gurises Unidos (Montevideo, Uruguay) teaches local people how to take advantage of government resources, to obtain IDs for poor children and how to obtain help for families in crisis.
   Contact Jorge Freyre <gurises@chasque.apc.org>
   
   
7. Ediac (México DF) involves the whole community (hotel staff, waiters, street vendors, and families) – and local children – in the struggle to end child prostitution.
   Contact Norma Negrete, <negreteagua@hotmail.com>
   
   
8. For Mi Cometa (Guayaquil, Ecuador), the local community is the key to preventing children from leaving home. This NGO organises groups who work to improve the homes of the poor in their communities. They also organise boys into groups for political activities or simply to play together. In addition, their ecological projects. In all of their activities, the community is the central focus.
   Write César Cárdenas, micometa@on.net.ec
   
   
9. CEDRO (Lima, Perú) helps young people and their families to become aware of their potential by involving them in installing water and drainage systems and by donating small libraries to mothers who can then teach their children to read. In marginal communities in the city, this project has been very successful in preventing children from leaving home.
   Contact Mónica Ochoa: mochoa@cedro.org.pe