For child street beggars, there is nothing like school. From day to day, week to week, months running into years, the routine is the same: begging along highways despite the inherent risks and hazards.

It can be easy to pass without blinking by the human “garbage” that we are so quick to dismiss as lazy, drug and/or alcohol addicted. We are sometimes all too eager to put out of sight the begging children who we think learn from their elders when in actuality, many child street beggars are actually raising themselves. It is emotionally painful to know that so many children live in squalour and that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to help all of them.

Begging has become a wide spread profession in many developing countries. Some adults beg because it is an easier way of earning money while others resort to begging because they genuinely need help. Disabled adults often beg alongside their children because they do not have the means for medical treatment.

House of Mercy Children’s Home currently has a programme that targets child street beggars including children of beggars and disabled persons in Lagos.

The programme has two main objectives, the first of which is to raise public awareness of child street beggars and the second to provide informal education through our mobile school for about 100 child street beggars.

We hope that the increased awareness will eventually discourage many parents and adults from using children as beggars, the public from delivering free alms to child street beggars and also encourage law enforcement authorities to prosecute persons directly responsible for using children in street begging.

Our workers actively encourage and counsel the most desperate among the child street beggars. We convince the child beggars that it is possible through God’s help to get out of even the worst kind of poverty.

Rather than give alms to the children, we direct our resources to their development. Through our Child Street Beggar Programme, we offer even the most desperate child a new dignity and self esteem and we also strengthen the children's capacity and help them see and understand their own potential to help themselves get out of their misery.

The educational reintegration of about 100 child street beggars through our Mobile School will not only provide a viable long-term alternative to street begging, but it will serve as an incentive for other children.

Our plan in the next few years is to establish a centre in Lagos for homeless street children including Child Street Beggars where there will be schools and a vocational centre to teach various trades.