UK Charity Commission Registration Number 1120536
 

Project Scorpio

Creating a drop-in/night shelter for street children in Luxor.

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September 2009

We were recently asked to assist a group of families who live on a rubbish dump in Luxor and this led us to think about the children who live on Luxor's streets. The problem may not be nearly as great as it is in Cairo, but it is still of concern. It is accepted that not all the children you see begging in Luxor are needy children. Some of them are being used as wage earners because their families know how generous visitors can be. It is a situation that exists in India and in many other third-world countries. Like most needy families, really desperate children seldom ask for anything. Instead they scavenge first for food and then for anything that they can sell. You can see them inside the rubbish skips looking for whatever could be of use. It is these children that we would like to help.

A small drop-in centre in the centre of Luxor would allow street children to come and go as they pleased as it would not be a children's home. However, it would provide them with a hot meal, clean clothes and first aid if they needed it. For those who have nowhere to live, it could be used as a night shelter where children could come to escape the cold of the winter nights and to protect them from harm that can befall vulnerable people anywhere. Recently, a sharp rise in the number of female street children in Cairo being raped and finding themselves underage mothers has been reported. A street child trying to care for another street child leads to an exceptionally hard life; being an unwed mother in an Islamic Society is to be vilified whatever the circumstances that gave rise to the situation might have been.

A project like this can only be tackled with the help of the Egyptian Social Services and their assistance would be sought right from the initial planning. Little Stars already has a child protection policy and this would be revised to cover the situation. All staff would be very carefully vetted to ensure that all the children were entering a safe and secure environment.

However, such a scheme would take funding and as we have little, the project will sit on the back-burner but one day become a reality when funding is found. Until then please keep these children in your thoughts.