The Fostering Education Program is the backbone of Street Angels. There is no way to prevent children from being forced by poverty to beg or work in dangerous city streets without providing their destitute families with an alternate source of income. Many families in and around the community of Dona Aurora comb through garbage for food and have no choice but to depend on the labour of their children for survival.
This program is our best vehicle for getting aid directly into the hands of distressed families. Over the years it has meant the difference between life and death for more than one child. It began in 1994, when one Canadian, a struggling single mother herself, offered to foster an eight-year-old street vendor. Today we have 200 children enrolled in the program. Counting siblings, this means that over 700 children are now benefiting from improved nutrition, schooling and family support services subsidized by our foster parents.
Canadian foster parents commit a $40 monthly tax-deductible nutritional and educational subsidy for five years to a specific child and family. The five-year commitment from the donor guarantees recipients a significant period of at least some financial stability. We give the majority of this donation directly to the child's mother (or responsible adult caring for the child). The remaining funds are disbursed as emergency medical and housing aid on an as-needed basis to the families and as small fees for the local women, themselves very poor, who coordinate the program and provide additional support services to these families. Foster Parents receive annual progress letters and photos of their children.
The monthly income subsidy improves the nutritional level of the entire family; helps offset the loss of income entailed in sending children to school rather than out to work; and, because it is often the only income that the mother has under her control, plays a vital role in promoting the autonomy and status of women.
Please foster a child and help us keep some of the world's most vulnerable children off the streets, safe at home, healthy and in school.
The Fostering Education Program is the backbone of Street Angels. There is no way to prevent children from being forced by poverty to beg or work in dangerous city streets without providing their destitute families with an alternate source of income. Many families in and around the community of Dona Aurora comb through garbage for food and have no choice but to depend on the labour of their children for survival.
This program is our best vehicle for getting aid directly into the hands of distressed families. Over the years it has meant the difference between life and death for more than one child. It began in 1994, when one Canadian, a struggling single mother herself, offered to foster an eight-year-old street vendor. Today we have 200 children enrolled in the program. Counting siblings, this means that over 700 children are now benefiting from improved nutrition, schooling and family support services subsidized by our foster parents.
The monthly income subsidy improves the nutritional level of the entire family; helps offset the loss of income entailed in sending children to school rather than out to work; and, because it is often the only income that the mother has under her control, plays a vital role in promoting the autonomy and status of women.
