Children show the way: Participatory programs for children of South African streets and squatter camps.
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abstract
After the end of Apartheid in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela declared that a major standard of the nation's functioning would be the well-being of its children. This chapter examines the lives of some of the beneficiaries of Mandela's Children's Fund and other national and international philanthropies: street boys under 18 yrs of age enrolled in a program of comprehensive services named Street-Wise and 10-14 yr old squatter camp children who participate in a program of child-based community development named Growing Up in Cities (GUIC). The authors describe the goals of human development that these programs seek to foster, and ways they seek to provide participants with the skills needed to achieve self-sustaining, socially constructive lives. Street-Wise represents a model of crisis intervention; GUIC, a long-term process of community development. The authors conclude their discussion by writing that the conditions of the children in Street-Wise and GUIC and the millions of children like them around the world ultimately need to be addressed in the larger context of the rift between north and south, rich and poor, along with countervailing efforts to extend the meaning of rights to include basic equity in food, shelter, education, employment, and social inclusion for all. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(chapter)
