Reportages X: Street children

Looking at Farida, you're struck by her life experienced glare. It is difficult to believe that she is only a ten year old girl. Feriha is the same age, a gentle Hazara girl. They sit in a classroom full of eager children. This is no ordinary school; this is Ashiana center, a place that offers education to street children. These children have one thing in common; they have all had to earn a living on the streets from a very young age. In Afghanistan it is normal that children start helping support their families at a young age. Sometimes families are so poor they have to send their children to work on the streets.
Look at the picture of a little boy at Hazrat Ali Shrine in Mazar-e Sharif. He presents a good example of your regular child-salesman: he carries around his neck a box where chewing gum, biscuits and crisps are.
Ashiana aims to save children from work slavery through the help of a personal sponsor. To find a sponsor, Ashiana offers the families a contract: the family gets 260 US dollars a year (this is the amount the child could make in a year). After signing the contract the child is free of work and can devote his or her time to studying. Sometimes the family agrees later to transfer their children to regular schools, to continue their education. These children are very good students: usually after a year at Ashiana they go straight to state school to the second or third class. Today Ashiana has helped 2000 children become literate.
Sometimes you are left with the impression that the family is against educating their children, but the truth is in most cases the reason is poverty caused by extraordinary situations. Farida and Feriha talk about their life in the outskirts of Kabul, where the whole family is squeezed into a small rented room. Even a small room costs 2000 Afghanis (40 US dollars) a month. Both have six brothers and sisters who also work: some wash cars, others sell chewing gum.
Farida is a half time student to begin with: during the mornings she goes gathering paper and cardboard in the streets with her brother. For lunch Farida goes to the Ashiana center: the lunch given at the center is usually the only proper meal the street children get during the day. Farida likes to study, she especially likes the Koran lesson, secretly she dreams of becoming a teacher.
Feriha has been free from working the streets for the last year. She used to look for plastic with her brother in piles of garbage, which they sold to merchants, earning about 60 Afghanis (1.2 US dollars) a day.
Now the girl who dreams of becoming a doctor goes to a regular school, she especially likes Mathematics. She is happy that she has made many friends at school as well. Even others know about her past as a street child, no one makes fun of her: in impoverished Afghanistan, gathering garbage is a regular job.