World Street Children News recently reported on the obstacles faced by organizations providing services to street children in Vietnam. The blog post reports on the following troubling issues:

• Despite the decline in the number of street children in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, an influx of migrant children is complicating the methods by which the population is measured. Moreover, most of this decline is due to state institutionalization of street children, rather than adoption or family reunions

• The pace at which the measures of the international conference on the rights of children the government signed onto in 1999 is not keeping up with the needs of street children. Consequently, most street children do not possess birth certificates, barring them from government work, university, and even access to care at hospitals. These barriers are feeding the cycle of low-wage work and poverty.

• Organizations providing care to street children are still not allowed to build networks, preventing them from sharing resources and anecdotal evidence to provide better service.

To contribute to Armed with a Paintbrush’s ongoing donation drive to fund job-training and scholarship programs, please visit the How You Can Help section of our website. Or to provide immediate support to our partner organizations serving street children (and to put a smile on an artist’s face!), buy a painting from our online store.

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