Saving Malaysian Street Kids

Malaysia is one of the wealthiest countries in South East Asia but in the capital Kuala Lumpur you will still find beggars on the streets and many of them children.

According to Malaysian branch of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, there are tens of thousands of children living on the street in Kuala Lumpur

Places like Bukit Bintang, Chow Kit and Petaling Street are the areas in where large numbers of beggars are.

This woman asked not to be named.

She explains that she has 8 children... with the youngest only 2 years old.

Here there are also young children aged 4 to 8 selling toys on the street.

We tried to talk to the two young girls, but halfway through their father Sailin interrupted.

I asks him where did they come from... he explains that they come from Sabah.

In order to provide an alternative for people like Sailin, in 2010, Chow Kit Kita was set-up.

It provides a safe place for the street kids to learn life skills.

Co-founder Lew Pik Svonn says that many of the street children come from impoverished homes... live in abusive environments... are school dropouts and are children of sex workers and drug users.

She wanted to give them a way out.

“We teach them art skills which they are interested in. We did a survey with the kids and ask them what would you like to occupy your time with? What skill would you like to learn? And through the survey, we found out that all of them want to do t-shirt printing, they wanted to learn video, photography, mural painting. So these were the workshops we corporated into the project. We designed our project to suit their needs.”

People from various art background who are experienced with community projects help out with their workshops.

“Currently we have 200 volunteers registered to this project. They are mainly students and young adults and there are volunteers who come in every session to help out.”
   
Even though there are NGOs like Chow Kit Kita being set up, there are still many efforts that need to be done to reduce the large numbers of street children in Malaysia.