University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, April 19, 1988
11
Student's book offers her story of street children
Student's book o Research gives insight of Paraguay's problem
Mark Porter/KANSAN
By Kevin Dilmore
By Kevin Dimore
Kansan staff writer
Susana Carriizosa swept her hair away from her neck with the back of her hand and softly cleared her throat. In a voice raised slightly above her normal pitch, she began to tell a story.
"My name is Carlo," she said. "I am 6 years old. My parents are underemployed, so I sell newspapers in the streets to help feed my family. I do not go to school because I need to eat. When I have earned money from selling newspapers or fruit, I go home to sleep."
It was a story she had worked more than two years to tell.
Her voice dropped to her normal tone. "And that is a typical story of a girl in the city."
Carrizos, Asuncion, Paraguay,
graduate student in social welfare,
began spending time with children in
Asunción in 1984. After 15 months of
research that included interviewing
about 200 children and another 10
months of writing, editing and
designing, she ended up with a book.
Susana Carrizosa
"On the Streets: Children Living and Working in the Streets of Asunción," was published in Spanish in December 1986.
The first edition has sold out, and UNICEF is negotiating with Carrizosa and the book's three other authors for the translation of "On the Streets" into several different languages. The English edition has been completed and will appear soon.
Carrizosa said that when she began studying street children, she had no idea what to do.
"We just wanted some information to help us study the children," she said. "We didn't know we would write a document."
While Carrizoza was working toward a bachelor's degree at the National University of Paraguay, she
and three others, including her sister and brother-in-law, became interested in the plight of the street children.
"We wanted to do something to help the children but found no information on them," Carrizosa said. "We had some information on other children in other countries, but it was not the same."
Because of her preconceptions based on others' findings, Carrizosa was surprised by the results of her own preliminary study.
"We thought the children were delinquents, drug-users and aggressives," she said. "They apparently had no families. We were very wrong."
Surprising results
"We knew we could not work with the children if we did not know who they were and what they wanted from life," she said.
That realization made her want to intensify her study.
With that in mind, Carrizoza and her partners surveyed more than 200 children on the streets and extensively interviewed several children during a number of months. Profiles of two groups of children emerged from the data.
"But most of them worked in the streets to help their families survive, to feed their brothers and sisters."
"Some children have lost contact with their families," she said. "You can tell by their appearances that they live in the streets; their clothes are different, they are dirty, they have a poor diet.
Carrizosa said that children in the streets of Asunción ranged in age from 4 to 16, would work at anything and would sell everything imaginable to make money, including themselves.
said, "but mostly they sell things: aspirin, chewing gum, newspapers, fruit, anything. And they sell at intersections, sidewalks, any place where you go."
"There is some prostitution," she
"The children work very hard. They consider their jobs as professions."
The street children do not limit themselves to one job, either.
"Some of them, for example, would sell newspapers in the morning, sell fruit during lunch, wash windshields in the afternoon, then watch parked
Because their families are dependent on any money they can raise, the children frequently skip school to stay on the streets.
cars all night," she said.
"Their attitude is 'Why go to school?' They don't teach you how to earn more, or how to protect yourself or the criminals and policemen," Carrasi said.
And even though some children technically might live at home, they still sleep on the streets. "The physical conditions of their homes make
We thought the children were delinquents, drug-users and aggressives. They apparently had no families. We were very wrong.
'W
- Susana Carrizosa
sleeping under an awning or on a sack of sugar seem more comfortable," Carrizosa said.
Asuncion, Paraguay, graduate student
Emotional scars
but even if "On the Streets" had never hit the streets as a book, Carriosa said that her research helped her answer two troubling questions.
"You cannot write about problems when the government says there are no problems," Carriosa said.
"We didn't know how to reach the children to help them or if we should work in the schools or in families," she said. "We realized that the streets were where the children were."
Carrizosa said the constant competition for food and money gave street children lasting emotional and psychological scars.
"They are permanently unprotected as workers and as children," she said. "They see their lives in a narrow way, and it is hard for them to foresee a future. We feel they have lost their childhood."
"And it was not written to make a profit but to give information on the problem."
Because Carrizosa felt that the plight of the street children was an important one to communicate, she said that she tried to make "On the Streets" an easy book to understand.
"We used life stories of the children, photographs and graphics to make the book easy for many types of readers," she said.
problem.
Carrizosa said that she encountered few problems while writing the book but that she was worried about whether the book would see print in Paraguay.
Carrizosa said she also realized that the children in the streets were only a symptom of a larger problem.
"It is important for society to understand that the children are on the streets because of the economic situation in the country," she said. "For us to blame the children would be to blame the victims."
UNICEF support
Nevertheless, UNICEF was impressed enough with Carrizosa's understanding of the problem that the organization is negotiating for a companion book to "On the Streets."
"They want a book designing a program to help the children," Carrizosa said, "and we are discussing it."
Carrizosa said she was pleased with the success of "On the Streets," especially because her book did not stray from her intentions.
"We did not want to romanticize the plight of the children in this book," she said. "We did not want people to say 'Oh, what a pity about these boys,' but to do something."
Cristina Fonseca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, junior, said she admired Carriosa for her research attitude.
"She went into her research without any preconceptions and started with nothing," Fonseca said. "She tried everything to reach the children and finally realized the best place to reach them was in the streets."
Fonseca spent two years as a volunteer working with homeless children in the city of Buenos Aires, researching with Carrizosa on the plight of Latin American children.
"I think Susi's book is important," Fonseca said, "because we need alternatives for working with these kids."
ON CAMPUS
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