Introduction

Mashal Model School was started nine months ago to accommodate the street children of Bari Imam Area. At present we have 87 boys and 50 girls. All classes cater for multi-aged children.  These young people face hardships at home, and at their work place- that is the main darbar, where they wash cars, sell flowers and sweets and help in cooking for the langar. They have little choice but to survive on their own in the company of gangs on the street. Since the inception of the school, these children have shown us that they feel securer and safer with their peers in the classroom and refrain from being with others who are under the influence of drugs and violence on the street. Children that are on the streets, in the company of these gangs are placed in extreme vulnerability, and here they face economic exploitation, sexual and physical abuse and glue sniffing, leading to drug abuse.  Street children experience low or no access to nutrition, personal support or a family that cares for them. They have no access to health care, educational training, or police protection. 

Survival on the street is extreme and can mean sex work, drug use, violence, begging and stealing. They have no means of protection in such an environment.  The actual nature of being on the streets itself places a child at risk in violation of their human rights. Some of the children at our school have said to been picked up by the police authorities, stripped of their merchandise, beaten up and after a few hours were asked to produce two hundred rupees for their release, as they were told not to sell their merchandise near the darbar. These children have to fend for themselves and their families. In this process, they never get the opportunity to go to school. These children whose parents have migrated from different parts of Pakistan, and some from Afghanistan, have been living in the area of Bari Imam for an average of more than seven years. Most of the children were born here and our localized. But these children still don’t have any identity or are given any recognition or dignity. There parents are non-literate and prefer that their child goes out and earns income by working on the streets. Most of the youth which do not go to school, become trucker’ assistants, picking up garbage and scavenging. The risk of HIV infection can increase from migration and exploitation. The chief component for the non-literate children is prevention, teaching them life skills, non-formal education for literacy and vocational training. At Mashal Model School, we have 83 children in our nursery section, most of them ranging from four years to ten years. The reason why we have admitted such children to this school is because they have the potential to be at risk in this environment. Educating them on issues in health and hygiene and particularly protection against abuse, is one of the core aims of our curriculum. Although we follow the National Book Foundation curriculum which is the syllabus set by the Board Of Education in Pakistan. We give them concepts of awareness through story- telling, dramatic plays and drawing. When these children were admitted to this school, they were quarreling and fighting, using violence-bating and kicking- and abusive language caused by sibling rivalry. The fact that, for the first time, they all sat together made them feel a sense of belonging, that they did not have to be on guard all the time and that there is actually a place, which is their own and is a safe haven for them. Now when they go on the streets to sell their goods they look out for each other as they are united and finally feel protected.
At Mashal, the first rule that we all worked on, as teachers, was that physical abuse, in any sense is non- acceptable: as these kids come from a background of constant physical abuse by their parents and a lack of emotional and directional support. They are also being exploited in and through labor.

Street children
• A street child is a term used to refer to children who live on the streets of a city. They are deprived of family care and protection.
• Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 17 years old, and their population between different cities is varied.
• Street children live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks or on the street itself
• A great deal has been written defining street children, but the primary difficulty is that there are no precise categories,
• But rather a continuum, ranging from children who spend some time in the streets and sleep in a house with ill-prepared adults, to those who live entirely in the streets and have no adult supervision or care.
• A widely accepted set of definitions, commonly attributed to UNICEF, divides street children into two main categories
• Children on the street are those engaged in some kind of economic activity ranging from begging to vending. Most go home at the end of the day and contribute their earnings to their family.
• They may be attending school and retain a sense of belonging to a family. Because of the economic fragility of the family, these children may eventually opt for a permanent life on the streets.