Chapter 2
Street Children in Vietnam
Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy
Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Abstract
The problem of street children in Vietnam arises from the interaction of traditional causessuch as the loss or divorce of parents and new causes such as economic incentive. This
paper reviews the existing studies for the definition and classification of street children.
Changing conditions are compared across time and between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
We then propose a new typology of street children based on causes and situations. Causes
are classified into broken family, mindset problem, and economic migration. Situations are
divided into current protection and future investment. It is shown that the broken familygroup is most difficult to assist while the economic migration group often shows strong
desire for study and better life. However, their aspiration is frequently interrupted by various setbacks. Since street children are not a homogenous group, intervention must also bediversified according to the needs of each type of children.

11Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Acknowledgements
First of all, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to theYouth Volunteer Club of the Student Magazine of Vietnam, who helped us conduct the survey on street children in Hanoi in June 2004.
We would also like to thank the officials of the Ministry of Labor,
Invalids and social Affairs (MOLISA) and the Department of Labor, Invalids
and Social Affairs (DOLISA) in Ho Chi Minh City; the Committee of Population, Family and Children in Hanoi; and the Committee of Population, Family
and Children in Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh, Thanh Xuan, and Tay Ho Districts in
Hanoi for their research support, sincere advice, and the valuable data that they
have provided.
We are also equally grateful to the people at the Terre des hommes
Foundation for sharing with us their precious data and experience in working
with street children. Without their information, our research would have been
incomplete.
In the process of writing this paper, we benefited greatly from many
useful comments by the attendants of several workshops that Vietnam Development Forum hosted or co-hosted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam
and in Osaka and Tokyo in Japan. We would like to send our best regards andsincere thanks to these participants.
Our workshops would not have been so successful had we notreceived the hospitality and assistance of Dr. Truong Thi Minh Sam (Instituteof Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City) and Ms. Azko Hayashida (National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies), who helped us with the logistics andorganization of the workshops in Ho Chi Minh City and Japan, respectively.
We are aware that this paper still has limitations. The responsibility
for any remaining errors rests solely with the two authors. At the same time, wewould be very happy to receive any comments or suggestions from the readersof this paper.

12Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

1. Introduction
The problem of street children is one of the most pressing social problems in Vietnam in general and in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in
particular. The sight of children selling chewing gum in restaurants or shining
shoes in street corners has become familiar. People sometimes call them roaming kids or “dust of life.” Although the problem is well known, the dynamic
mechanism that prompts these children to drop out of school and go selling inthe street is yet to be analyzed deeply or comprehensively. Such causes as direpoverty and parents’ divorce may be common to the street children problem inall developing countries, but other causes may be unique to Hanoi and HCMC,
the two cities experiencing an enormous social and economic transformation.
Children end up on the street for a variety of reasons. For some, thestreet is an escape from broken families or domestic violence. For others, street
life is a means of supplementing family income, passing time, and even having
fun. In addition, the breakdown of traditional family values, educational zeal,
and community structure leaves a large number of children without necessary
care and support for their sound growth and development.
Children who work or live on the streets do not have full knowledgeof their rights and are often unaware of risks in unguided urban life. Many ofthem are under the stress of day-to-day living. Some use alcohol or illegal drugs
to relieve the stress and to forget painful experiences. Others are trained to
become professional beggars. Still others commit crimes individually or join
anti-social gangs. Disabled children may be sold to strangers who force them tobeg on streets. Girls seem to be in particular danger as the target of sexualassault and exploitation.
Thanks to the Doi moi (renovation) policy, the people’s average living standard has improved dramatically since the late 1980s. National statistics
show that GDP per capita rose from 156 USD in 1992 to 482 USD in 2002
(General Statistical Office [GSO] 2004). In 1993, 58 percent of the population
was under the poverty line1, but the ratio fell to 37.4 percent in 1998 and to 28.9

1

The poverty line used here is 1 USD/person/day.

13

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

percent in 2002 (GSO 1999, 2004). With these achievements, Vietnam is one of
the best performers among the low-income countries. Despite this, fast growthand global integration have also intensified certain traditional social problems
and created new ones. As the average income rose, some problems grew to bemuch worse and more visible. The problem of street children is one of these2.
Vibrant cities like Hanoi and HCMC generate new opportunities anddemands for jobs like house cleaning, shoe shining, and selling petty goods toresidents and foreign tourists; urban people are unwilling to perform these jobs.
The expectation of cash income encourages rural labor to migrate to the cityand supply such services. Working on the street may be more dangerous andtiresome tiring than tilling paddy fields in the countryside, but it is more profitable. Rural people come to cities even though they have to live separatelyfrom their families and familiar landscape. In addition, the excitement of urbanlife as well as opportunities for education, training, and jobs attract young rural
people like a magnet. These are the “pulling” forces of rural-urban migration.
With the rapid growth of the national economy, rural life in Vietnam
has also changed substantially, sometimes for the better but other times for theworse. The material conditions in villages have improved thanks to better roads,
schools, electrification, medical service, and so on. However, new troubles havealso arisen. The way of thinking and the education level of many villagers cannot catch up with the speed of social and economic change. Traditional values
are weakened while new values to support rural life are slow to emerge. Eachfarmer has increasingly less land to cultivate due to population pressure andtransfer to other uses, which accelerates labor surplus in rural areas. These are
the “pushing” forces of rural-urban migration for both adults and children.
Many researchers, officials, and social workers who work directlywith disadvantaged children in urban areas. Many studies and reports have been
done on this issue with various purposes and methods. Based on this existing
work, we would like to analyze the problem of street children further with special attention on the dynamic implications of Vietnam’s economic growth.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section intro-

2

Other problems that may intensify with economic development include corruption, environmental
destruction, land bubble, the rise of materialism, and the decline of cultural and spiritual values.

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

duces alternative definitions and classifications of street children. Section 3
reviews existing studies of street children in HCMC and Hanoi, including therecent survey conducted by VDF. Section 4 analyzes the causes and situationsof street children and the mutual interaction of the two. Dynamic movements
among different situations are also discussed. Section 5 presents some casestudies of former street children. Section 6 concludes the paper and suggests
some issues for future work.

2. Street Children: Who are They?
Street children is the most common term used by international organizations and related agencies to refer to the type of children who are the focus of
our study. This term was also adopted in Vietnam and officially used in government ministries and organizations. Recently, however, some Vietnamese government offices started to use the term children wandering and earning on thestreets instead of the old term for greater precision. In this paper the term street
children continues to be used because it is still widely and internationallyaccepted and has been used for a long time.
Apart from terminology, there is also the problem of defining thesechildren and counting them in accordance with each definition. In Vietnam atpresent, no one knows the exact number of children living or working on thestreet, and estimates vary from one organization to another. Clearly, the problems of definition and counting are closely related. In order to compare thenumbers of street children across time and location, it is necessary to use statistics collected under consistent—or at least similar—definitions. Moreover,street children are not a homogeneous group. Each child has a different family
background, a different reason for being on the street, a different educationlevel, and different requirements to be fulfilled. An effective categorization willbring a better understanding of the problems and the needs of each group of
street children.
2.1. Definitions by the government and international organizations
Street children can be defined in a number of ways. Let us briefly
look at some commonly used definitions, namely, those of the Ministry of15

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), the United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), and the Terre des hommes Foundation, a Swiss street children
NGO operating in Vietnam since 1989.
According to MOLISA, “street children” is one of the ten groups of
disadvantaged children3. Following the new law of Child care, Protection and
Education by the National Assembly in 2004, MOLISA defines street children
as “children who leave their families, earn their living by themselves, and have
unstable working and living locations; or children wandering on the street with
their families” (National Assembly 2004, p. 2). The number of street children in
the entire country was estimated to be around 19,000 in 2003, of which 1,500
were estimated to be in Hanoi and nearly 9,000 in HCMC. MOLISA does notclassify street children into subcategories.
UNICEF defines street children as children under 18 years old who
spend most of their time on the street. UNICEF also presents three subcategories of street children: street living children, street working children, and thechildren of street living families. Street living children are those who have lost
ties with their families and live alone on the street. Street working children arethose who spend all or most of their time working on the street to earn income
for their families or for themselves (they have a home to return to and do not

3

MOLISA’s categorization of disadvantaged children includes (1) orphans and abandoned children;(2) disabled children; (3) chemical- or toxic-affected victims; (4) HIV/AIDS-affected children; (5)working children in hard, toxic or risky conditions; (6) working children who live far away fromtheir family; (7) street children; (8) sexually abused children; (9) drug-addicted children; and (10)law violators.

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

usually sleep on the street). The children of street living families are those wholive with their families on the street.
The definitions and categorization of the Terre des hommes Foundation are similar to those of UNICEF. For this reason, the studies of street children by UNICEF and Terre des hommes should be compatible if proper care is
exercised. In its survey conducted in 2000, Terre des hommes Foundation(2004) defines street children as “children under 18 years of age, earningmoney through casual, street-based activities such as begging, scavenging, peddling, portering, shoe shining, pick-pocketing, petty theft” and who belong to
any one of the following categories (Table 1).
In this paper, we basically adopt the definition of the Terre deshommes with slight modification as follows: street children are children under
18 years of age who regularly earn money through casual, street-based activities.
2.2. Difficulties in collecting data
Even if all organizations agreed on one common definition and categorization of street children, which is not the case, data collection would not beeasy due to the invisibility, mobility, and seasonality of street children.
Invisibility of street children is one of the major difficulties for conducting survey studies. Some child workers are highly visible to any observer:
shoe shiners, barrow-pushers, beggars, and vendors of all kinds including trinkets, T-shirts, tourist guide books, chewing gum, and lottery tickets and results.
Others are much less visible: those who offer drugs or sexual services and those
who only work at night. In Cau Muoi Market in HCMC, for example, there aregroups of vegetable scavengers who usually work from midnight to 2:00 a.m.
and again from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. They sleep during the day. If a street children survey is conducted during the day time, these children are likely to beomitted (Terre des hommes Foundation, 2004).
Many street children move from one location to another in search ofcustomers. Some are willing to go anywhere to find an earning opportunity.
Their high mobility creates obvious problems for those who want to countthem. Some children also shift from one job to another.
Moreover, street activities are often seasonal. A survey carried out in

17

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohnosummer will give different results from those of a winter survey. The Tet holidays, the Vietnamese New Year, also greatly influences the ebb and flow ofstreet children.
According to Dr. Tran Trong Khue of the Institute of Social Sciencesin Ho Chi Minh City (ISSHO) and Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Minh of the Committee of Population, Family and Children (CPFC) in HCMC, the average numberof street children in HCMC in 2003 was around 8,000. However, this number
fluctuated significantly during the year. The number of street children is always
highest during the summer when children do not have to go to school. The children of poor rural families often take advantage of this spare time to earn extra
money for their families. They leave home for urban streets and engage invending or scavenging. The income that such a child brings home may be as
much as ten times what his or her parents earn monthly doing rural jobs4. Inother words, a child working this way in the summer months can make a sum
comparable to the family’s entire rural income for the year. Children are willingto trade off their summer vacation for the additional large income they may
gain. This is one clear economic explanation for the higher number of street
children in big cites in the summer.
Special events like National Independence Day and Seagames 22 (the22 South East Asia Games) also affect the number. In preparation for thesendevents, unwanted wanderers are rounded up and “institutionalized” in an effort
to beautify the cities. During this time, many street children disappear fromtheir normal locations5. Official campaigns like this leave street children withthe choice of cleaning up their act entirely or leaving the urban center—often
temporarily—for outer and less visible areas. If a survey does not account forthese factors, the results can easily be misunderstood.
To obtain a comprehensive view of the dynamics of street children,
surveys should ideally be conducted at different times in a year and at different

Information provided at the street children workshop conducted by VDF in HCMC in August
2004. Dr. Minh confirmed that a child from Duc Pho Commune in Quang Ngai Province, where
the average monthly income was about 100,000 VND, could earn as much as 300,000 VND per
month by selling lottery tickets in HCMC.
5
Captured street children in Hanoi are sent to Ba Vi and Dong Dau detention centers and those in
HCMC are often sent to the School for Teenagers No. 3 in Go Vap District
4

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

times of the day. This arrangement permits the researcher to gain detailed information on the movements of street children as well as on average trends. However, most surveys are not conducted this way due to limitations in time, funding, or human resources.

3. Comparing Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi:
Past and Present
Among the surveys on the street children in Vietnam, we have chosen
four surveys for comparison. Two were conducted in HCMC while the othertwo were conducted in Hanoi. Two describe the situations many years ago
while the other two are more recent. The four surveys are:(i) Terre des hommes Foundation, Children of the Dust in Ho Chi Minh City
(1992). The survey was conducted from January to June 1992.
(ii) Terre des hommes Foundation, A Study on Street Children in Ho Chi
Minh City (2004). The survey was conducted in 2000 and supplemented
by group discussions by service providers in 2002.
(iii) Nguyen Van Buom and Jonathan Caseley, Survey on the Situation ofStreet Children in Hanoi (March 1996). The survey was conducted in
November and December 1995.
(iv) A Survey on Street Children in Hanoi, conducted by VDF (unpublished).
The survey was conducted in June 2004.
3.1. Methodology
The four surveys above share a similar methodology. The only majordifferences among them are the locality and the size of surveys. In each case,information was gathered by a structured questionnaire followed by individualinterviews.
The first survey was conducted by the Terre des hommes Foundationin the first six months of 1992. Seven locations in HCMC were chosen: Ben
Nghe area (District 1), Ben Thanh Market area (District 1), Cau Mong, Cau
Muoi Market area (District 1), Cho Lon area (District 5), Sai Gon Railway Station (District 3), Western Bus Station area (Binh Chanh District), and Van
Thanh Bus Station (Binh Thanh District). In each area, the sample for interview

19Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

was chosen randomly. The gender ratio was chosen to be close to the actual
ratio of boys and girls on the street. Interviews were conducted by three project
officers and volunteers using a questionnaire.
The other Terre des hommes study was conducted in 2000 with elaborate real-time review and adjustments. The research locations included Cau
Muoi Market and Cau Mong area, Pham Ngu Lao area, Ben Nghe area, Van
Thanh area, Saigon Railway Station area, Cho Lon area, Western Bus Stationarea, and Ben Thanh Market area. Survey conductors spent eleven days in eacharea. They initially examined the general profile of the street child community
in that area with a view to defining a representative group for individual interviews. Then they pre-tested the structured interview in the field. Following that,a workshop by survey conductors was held to revise the technique. It reviewed
the appropriateness of the categorization of street children; the definition andselection of representative groups; and the methods of conducting individualinterviews with the children, collecting data, and writing reports. As a result of
this review, the questionnaire and interview techniques were modified. Continual support from the Terre des hommes survey coordinator and regular wholegroup meetings further facilitated real-time process review.
The survey by Nguyen and Caseley was carried out in 1995 in foururban districts of Hanoi (Hai Ba Trung, Hoan Kiem, Dong Da, and Ba Dinh)
and in one rural district of Hanoi (Gia Lam). The survey instrument was a twopart questionnaire completed through two separate meetings with each child.
Meetings of all research teams were held weekly to discuss the progress of thesurvey and to solve any problems each team might have encountered.
The most recent survey was conducted by VDF in June 2004 in fourmain districts of Hanoi: Hoan Kiem, Hai Ba Trung, Thanh Xuan, and Tay Ho.
The survey instrument was a questionnaire. The interviews were conducted byfour people, who included one VDF researcher and three social workers of theYouth Volunteer Club of the Student Magazine of Vietnam.
Below, we highlight differences between the two cities and shifting
trends over time based on these four surveys. Since their sample sizes and survey locations differ, the results are not perfectly comparable and care should be
exercised in interpreting the results. Nevertheless, broad pictures should still bevalid.

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

3.2. Trends in number
The annual statistical report of MOLISA indicates that the total number of street children in Vietnam increased significantly in recent years. In 1997
there were 13,377 street children. The number rose to 19,047 in 1998 and to
21,016 in 2001. This suggests that the number of new children on the street ishigher than the number of children who quit street life and those who are nolonger counted as street children because they have grown older. The annual
statistical report of MOLISA also shows that street children are concentrated in
the two urban centers of Hanoi and HCMC. The number of street children isincreasing in both cities although special events like Seagames 22 temporarily
decrease their number.
Figure 1 reports the number of street children in HCMC at irregularintervals as reported by the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs(DOLISA) in HCMC. The increasing trend is consistent with the national data
up to 2001, but there was a sudden and significant drop immediately after
Seagames 22 and the passage of the new Law on Child Care, Protection and
Education by the National Assembly. Whether this reduction is permanent or
temporary remains to be seen.
Although it is noted by government officials that the number of street
children in Hanoi fell after the program of sending street children back to theirhometown was introduced in 2003, the essence of the problem may remain.
According to interviews conducted by VDF in 2004, the current number ofstreet children in Hanoi in comparison with that in past years may not havedecreased significantly, although the street children may be more scattered andless visible. Some argue that the problem of street children cannot be solved
unless its root causes, such as rural poverty, are properly dealt with.
Recently, from our observation, the number of street children in thetwo big cities, Hanoi and HCMC, has decreased. In some locations like Hoan
Kiem lake in Hanoi and Ben Thanh Market area in HCMC, which used to be
crowded with street children, there is nearly no sight of wandering children,
shoe-shiners, or newspaper sellers. Two reasons can be mentioned. The first is astrictly implemented local government program of collecting street children andwandering people. The second may be the achievements of projects to assist
street children.

21

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

In 2005, 5,770 street children received help and support from local
authorities with school fees, vocational training, and job introduction. About
2,000 street children had been supported to reunite with their families and nearly 1,900 street children had been back to school. The number of street children
in the whole country, especially in Hanoi and HCMC, declined significantly
from 9,400 to 7,700 as of late 2005 (Thong tan xa Vietnam, 2006).
In August 2004, MOLISA cooperated with the European Delegation
to implement the first phase 6 of the Assistance for Street Children Project in 10
cities and provinces7. The project aims to help six groups of beneficiaries: (i)children currently living and working on the streets; (ii) street children who
have been resettled but who remain at risk of going back to streets; (iii) children
at risk of leaving home and migrating to the cities; (iv) families of resettled
street children and families of children at risk; (v) communes/wards with highnumbers of children having left home and migrated to the city; and (vi) relatedorganizations/institutions involved in the project activities.
Although the total numbers of supported street children and resettled
The second phase will be implemented in Da Nang and another province and in some districts of
Quang Nam, Dong Thap, Long An, and An Giang.
7
Hanoi, HCMC, Nha Trang, Thanh Hoa, Phu Yen, Quang Ngai, Thua Thien Hue, Hung Yen, Vinh
Phuc, and Ha Tinh.
622Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

street children have not been collected fully, it is obvious that the project hascontributed to decreasing the number of children on the streets. For example,
according to the DOLISA of Thanh Hoa province, up to August 2006, thanks tothe project, 321 out of 500 street children of Thanh Hoa (64 percent) had resettled with their families, and 1,000 children at risk had been prevented frombecoming street children. According to Hoang Hoa commune, in Hoang Hoa
commune, Vinh Phuc province, 86 street children of the commune had returned
and lived with their families after receiving support in the form of school fees,
vocational training, and capital lending. The few street children who remain in
Hoang Hoa are predicted to return to their families in the near future.
If this project is successful, by August 2007, there will have been
5,000 street children reached by specialized social workers providing individual
counseling services; 1,500 sustainably reunited with their families; 3,000 reaching National Education Standards for their age group; 2,600 gaining access tohealth care; 760 undertaking vocational education; and 250 provided with alternative care through kinship and foster family arrangements.
3.3 Where are they from?
It is well known that the vast majority of street children seen in big
cities are from rural areas, not from the cities themselves. But if we look closely, there are some differences and trends in the characteristics of street children
in HCMC and Hanoi.
According to the survey in 1992, 49.5 percent of the street children in
HCMC came from the Mekong Delta and South Central provinces. Together
with children from HCMC itself and its vicinity, a vast majority (86 percent)were from the southern half of the country. At that time, northern children andnorth central children were relatively few (7 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively) (Figure 2).
By 2000, the hometowns of street children in HCMC were a little
more widely spread, although 74 percent still came from the southern half ofthe country. Categorizing street children provides more detailed information.
More than 70 percent of children in categories A, B and C (see Table 1 above)came from the south and south central parts of the country while more than 60
percent of children in category D (economic motive) came from the north and23

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

north central parts. This indicates that, in recent years, most of the northernchildren in HCMC moved there as migrant workers. Category D children havedifferent attitudes and behavior from the other types because their lives and jobs
are more “stable” even though their earnings are generally low (Figure 3).
In the survey conducted by Buom and Caseley in Hanoi in 1995, the24Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

largest number of interviewed children came from Thanh Hoa province (27 percent). Children from Hai Hung (now split to Hai Duong and Hung Yen) ranked
second (21 percent). Children from Hanoi itself (17 percent) and Ha Nam (14percent) followed (Figure 4).
Similarly with HCMC, the hometowns of street children in Hanoi
shifted somewhat and become more diversified after nine years. The latest distribution of hometowns is shown in Figure 5.
These two surveys confirm what is well known among those working
with street children in Hanoi: the majority of working children come from rural

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Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

areas and, among them, Thanh Hoa sends the largest number8. Even in 2004,
the survey could not detect any street children whose native land was in thesouth of the country9.
On the contrary, HCMC as the economic hub of Vietnam attracts far
more economic migrant workers than Hanoi. There are even some Hanoian andCambodian children working in the streets of HCMC (0.6 percent each), while
in Hanoi we observe no street children from HCMC or foreign countries.
3.4. What do they do?
Generally speaking, jobs that street children undertake most frequently include scavenging, shoe shining, street vending, begging, selling lottery
tickets or lottery results, pick-pocketing, and pilfering in the market (in thisstudy we also include illegal activities as “jobs”). Here again, however, we seesome differences and trends according to gender, age, location, and survey
years.
The most popular jobs for boys are shoe shining, selling lottery tickets, pick-pocketing, and market portering. Meanwhile, girls often engage inselling lottery tickets and street vending. Small children often start with begging
and waste scavenging because they are too young to do physically demanding
work like portering. Older children like to work as street vendors after they gain
certain street life experience. Many of them do more than two jobs at the sametime.
The next two diagrams show the occupational distribution of street
children in HCMC in 1992 and 2000.
There is a current boom in the selling lottery tickets and shoe shining
in HCMC, neither of which existed in the 1992 survey. On the other hand, there
has been a significant decrease in begging since that time.
The most common jobs among street boys in Hanoi are shoe shining
Thanh Hoa is a poor coastal province south of Hanoi. It is traditional for Thanh Hoa people toleave their hometown for big cities to make a living. Three villages (Quang Hai, Quang Thai, andQuang Loi) are particularly well known as the homes of many migrants to Hanoi as well as to
HCMC.
9In the southern provinces, if a child has to leave home for urban working life, he or she always
goes to HCMC because this city is nearer, transportation is more convenient, and there is a mindset
among rural people to favor HCMC over all other cities.
826

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

27

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

and lottery result sales. Scavenging and street vending are jobs that girls often
do. The survey in 1992 identified the top five jobs for working children, namely, begging (9 percent), scavenging (14 percent), street vending (23 percent),
shoe shining (29 percent), and hand labor (20 percent).
The two recent surveys in Hanoi, the one conducted in 2003 (Committee of Population, Family and Children 2003a, 2003b) and the other conducted by VDF in 2004, also confirm that these occupations are the most popular ones.
3.5. A note on lottery tickets
Although the occupations of street children in HCMC and Hanoi
mostly overlap, some jobs undertaken by HCMC children are rarely seen in
Hanoi, and vice versa. One example is seen in lottery business.
In HCMC, selling lottery tickets is a very popular job for children of
every age. The lottery ticket sales system is more “developed” in HCMC with alarge number of lottery agents organizing child sellers. The adult sales agentsreceive lottery tickets from the state-owned lottery company and redistributethem to children. The adult agents bear the business risk and refund children for
the unsold portion of lottery tickets at the end of the day. These organizers
sometimes provide children with food and sleeping quarters. All profits fromselling the lottery tickets belong to the children.
In Hanoi, lottery tickets are sold by small-scale adult agents along thestreets. No child is involved as there is no organization to mobilize street children to sell lottery tickets. However, the announcement of lottery ticket results
is more “exciting” than it is in HCMC. Every day from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.,hundreds of children gather at the lottery result centers in Tang Bat Ho Street
and Hue Street. They record the results, carbon copy them, and run as fast as
they can to every lane and corner of Hanoi to sell them. While each result sheet
costs only 500 VND, a child with quick feet can earn 10,000 VND per day on
average. In HCMC no child sells lottery ticket results since the results are provided free of charge by any lottery agent right after the results are announced.

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

4. New Typology Based on Causes and Situations
While the existing classifications of street children, such as the one
proposed by the Terre des hommes Foundation (Table 1), are operationally useful in conducting surveys, we need a more structured classification for further
analysis. In this section we propose a new typology of street children based on
the distinction between causes and situations, and the relationship between
them. In considering the situations, it is necessary to separately discuss current
deprivation (poverty, health problems, emotional crisis, and so on) and the lackof future investment (education, training, job prospects, and so on).
4.1. Causes
The causes driving school-age children to the street can be divided
into three main groups which we shall call broken family, mindset problem, andeconomic migration. While these causes are mutually related and overlapping, amain cause can usually be identified for each street child. It is necessary toclearly distinguish them for deeper analysis and proper design of intervention,
as we will see below.
Group I: Broken family
This group includes children with extremely difficult family situations such as being orphaned or abandoned as a result of the death, divorce, or
separation of the parents; being a victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse;and the like. This is the traditional cause of street children that exists in any
developing country with or without economic growth.
The increasing rate of divorce, of which children are always the first
victims, is a pressing issue in Vietnamese society. The disintegration of thefamily is a great shock to them even if one of the parents continues to take careof them. Children abandoned as a result of parents’ divorce have to undergo aneven greater emotional shock than do those who remain with one parent. Being
left with relatives or grandparents, such children are easily discouraged fromstudy and lured by bad friends. Psychological damage is particularly severe
when a child loses one or both of the parents when it is very young.
There are approximately 120,000 abandoned children in the country.
Another estimate says that 3.4 percent of abandoned children are street chil-29

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

dren. This means that more than 4,000 abandoned children are roaming in thestreet10. From another angle, the recent survey of the Committee of Population,
Family and Children in Hanoi (2004) discovered that 12.3 percent of the interviewed children were from a broken family.
Domestic violence is a controversial topic that attracts much attention. There are a variety of definitions and opinions concerning domestic violence. Outdated feudal ideas still permeate relationships between husband andwife as well as between parents and children. Feudal ideology remains relatively strong among rural people. In such cases, family quarrels are common. The
majority, both women and men, agree that if the wife does something wrong,
the husband has the right to slap her. They believe that, by doing so, the husband is fulfilling his role as the head of the family and as a man.
Domestic violence takes many forms from physical violence such as
beating to psychological violence such as scolding, threatening, and making
quarrels. Many children leave home because they cannot bear the domestic violence inflicted on them. The most common situations include being beaten by a
drunk father or being scolded very severely when a child has done something
wrong.
Most of the street children who have left home because of domestic
violence are spiritually and emotionally impaired. While in-depth scientificresearch on the effects of domestic violence on the psychology of street children is lacking, this cause is mentioned in every survey on street children.
Group II: Mindset problem
This is a case where the family enjoys relatively unbroken relations
and an average—or at least not destitute—standard of living but still sends children to work in the street due to the wrong attitudes of the parents or of the children themselves.
Some children leave home because they are lured by friends or
because they want to savor freedom instead of going to school. Seemingly
exciting life in big cities and friends who already know the street life are the10
According to MOLISA’s data for 2001 as quoted in Committee of Population, Family andChildren in Hanoi (2004).

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

pulling force. For such children, earning money is not the main purpose. Naturally, they easily succumb to social evils like heroin, prostitution, and juvenile
delinquency.
However, the mindset problem most often arises on the parent side.
Some parents think that cash income is more important than children’s education. The temptation of luxurious life breeds and reinforces the wrong attitudeof the parents. By preventing their children from going to school and forcing
them to work hard for the family, they become a negative constraint on the children’s development. It is observed that some parents trade their children’s
future for nice furniture, electronic appliances, or a new house. Unfortunately,
there seems to be a positive correlation between rapid economic growth and thewrong attitude of adults. When the living standard improves day by day, thistype of street children tends to increase.
Group III: Economic migration
Children who are forced by dire poverty to migrate to urban areas toearn a living belong to this group. Here, the main cause of migration is economic. The important feature of this group is that the parents do not want their sonsor daughters to drop out of school and take to the street, but they feel there is noother choice given their economic situation. The children themselves often wantto continue schooling as well. What is important in identifying this group is notwhether the child has both parents or has only one parent, but whether or not afamily bond and consideration for children’s future exist. With proper love,even children raised by only one parent or grandparents will retain the right attitude towards education.
There is no doubt that family poverty is one of the major causes ofstreet children. Due to family poverty, children cannot study and play, lose thecare or protection of a guardian, and have to work long hours in unfriendly
places. In every survey discussed in Section 3 above, more than 70 percent of
the street children answered that they were working in the street because of
their family poverty.
Poverty may be the result of a natural disaster, the death or desertionof a bread earner, job loss, illness, injury, divorce, separation, the death of livestock, crop failure, theft, increase in dependents, and so on. Some of these overlap with the problem of broken family discussed above while others are beyond

31Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

the control of the household. When they occur, poverty and hunger become
inevitable.
4.2. Situations
Each street child is different. Apart from the initial cause that drives
the child out onto the street, their life and working styles vary greatly. It is
important to clearly distinguish their situations because their needs and required
assistance also vary greatly with their situations. This paper proposes to divide
the situations that street children face into two dimensions, namely, the degrees
of current protection and investment for future. For all deprived people, current
protection is of utmost concern for the respect for human dignity and ensuring
the minimum standard of life. But for children, investment in their future isequally—or even more—crucial.
Current protection
Current protection refers to whether or not the child is protected physically and mentally against various risks now so that his or her daily life is notexcessively miserable or threatened. This further breaks down into several contributing factors such as:
1. Physical health (injury, sickness, malnutrition, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS,
physical disability, etc.)
2. Mental health (fear, lack of love, trauma, lack of concentration or discipline, mental disability, etc.)
3. Assault risk (bullied, beaten, tortured, raped, detained, sold, etc.)
4. Job hazard (engaged in an “at risk” job—see Table 1)
5. Financial shocks (family needs medicine, being cheated, money is stolen,
fined by police, etc.)
6. Shelter (sleep under a roof or outside)
7. Adult protection and guidance (parent, guardian, NGO, etc.)
8. Group protection (work and live in group or alone)
The first two factors (1, 2) describe the present condition of the childwhile the next three (3, 4, 5) measure the degree of uncontrollable risk to which
he or she is subjected. The remaining three factors (6, 7, and 8) help the child to
avoid potential problems or deal effectively with the problems that have arisen.
While these factors may improve or deteriorate simultaneously, they are in prin-32

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

ciple separate and can take different values for each child. We can say that thechild is well protected against imminent risks if these factors are all favorable,
and we can make the converse conclusion if they are poor in every direction11.
Future investment
Another key element in gauging the welfare of children is whether
they are receiving adequate education or training in preparation for the future.
Without investment in human capital, children cannot expect any bright futureor realize any dream, even if they are well fed and protected today. Naturally,
therefore, the degree of future investment should be the second dimension in
defining their situation. With adequate knowledge and skill, children will havea much greater chance of escaping their current misery through finding a stable
and safer job. At the same time, this prospect gives them hope, encouragement,
and a new meaning to their tough life at present.
More specifically, future investment can take several forms. If thechild has been out of school for a few years or less, returning to formal schooling should be seriously considered. The child should study at least up to the 12th
grade and should be given a chance to go to a university if warranted. If thisoption is not feasible, private tutoring by volunteer teachers and classes offered
by NGOs may substitute. For those who have been out of school for a long timeand no longer have the aptitude to study for many years, vocational training of
shorter duration should be provided. Among general skills, English and computers are very popular among aspiring street children. But they should be combined with more specific vocational training that fits the characteristics of eachchild. Equally important but frequently neglected is the need to link vocational
training to actual jobs. Guidance and assistance in job search are crucial indetermining whether learned skills are used productively or wasted.
Some factors may impede the child’s investment for the future. The
first and perhaps the most common is the financial factor. Most classes andtraining programs require a fee. If the fee is out of reach of the child, he or she

11

The Terre des homes Foundation uses some of these situational factors (job hazard, shelter, adultprotection) along with what we call causes (broken family, street family [mindset problem], economic migration), in its classification of street children in Table 1 above. In this paper, we preferto treat causes and situations differently.

33

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

is not able to attend.
The second is the time constraint. Even if a course is offered for free,
the child still faces a tradeoff between work and knowledge because of theopportunity cost related to time. If the child goes to school, he or she will earn
less on the street. Similarly, if the course takes a long time, in terms of hours
per day or duration in months or years, the child is less likely to choose toattend—unless sufficient compensation is offered to cover the lost working
time. In this sense, financial and time constraints are related.
Third, many street children simply lack the discipline and patience needed to attend a course. The longer they have been on the street, the more this is so.
Fourth, another important factor is the encouragement (or lack of it)from the community surrounding the child. If the child’s friends begin to attend
a class, he or she is more likely to attend it too. Among fellow street children,the contagion effect is usually very powerful. Similarly, the child will attend
classes more regularly if he or she receives constant encouragement from parents or adult acquaintances. On the contrary, however, if the parents actively
discourage the child from studying, an obedient child may easily follow thisadvice. The objection of an unwilling parent is one of the biggest obstacles insending street children to school or a training program.
4.3. Correlation and dynamism between causes and situations
Typical situations and aspirations
While all street children face the risky situations of street life, thekind and degree of risks they have to cope with differ significantly dependingon the initial cause of becoming street children.
Children from a broken family (Group I in Figure 9) are the least protected against current risks and the most lacking in investment opportunities.
Their life situation is often much tougher than street children of other groups.
The risks of drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, assault, abuse, sexual exploitation, andother serious troubles are much higher with this group even if they try to protect
themselves by roaming and sleeping together (risks are even higher if they arealone). Similarly—and regrettably—the risk of becoming a promoter of social
evil rather than its victim is also high. These children are rarely seen to be goingto school or receiving vocational training on their own. With a prolonged rough34

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

Mindset
ProblemEconomic
Migration
BrokenFamilylife, they become streetwise and often lose the discipline and patience required
to keep regular time and study hard. They are stuck in a difficult position (asillustrated by their location in the lower left corner of Figure 9) and can hardly
escape the situation without proper and dedicated intervention.
Children who drop out of school due to the wrong attitude of the parents (Group II) are less deprived, relatively speaking, in the current situation
than the children in the first group since their parents can look after them. They
are relatively well fed and protected. It is rare to see them severely victimized
by street gangs, or even joining such gangs. The biggest problem with thisgroup, however, is the strong opposition of the parents when someone (teacher,social worker, or the children themselves) proposes an education or training
program for them. Migrating families work hard to move up from the lower left
corner to the upper left corner of the diagram, but they do not invest in the children’s future12.

One NGO assisting street children in Hanoi reports the case of a boy whose parents forbid him to
go to school. Driven by the love of learning, he ran away from home to work and study in Hanoi.

1235

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Children who migrate for economic reasons (Group III) face least difficulty in comparison with the other two groups, provided that their family ties
are basically intact and children retain the right attitude and a strong desire forstudying and improving life. Their main or only reason for joining the street life
is economic. They often have close contacts with people from the native village
and rent a room with previous neighbors. Collective protection provides themwith an adequate risk-sharing mechanism against the contingencies of fallingill, running out of money, and the like. Moreover, they are often very eager toreturn to school or learn useful skills for the future if the opportunity arises;some actually go to school by their own. Their parents normally support their
aspiration. Children in this group are equipped with the right attitude and incentive to move not only vertically (upward) but also horizontally (rightward) in
Figure 9.
If each street child is given a score between 1 and 10 in both thedegree of current protection and of future investment, his or her situation may
be identified with a location in this diagram. Contributing factors to current protection include physical and mental health, assault risk, job security, financial
situation, shelter, adult protection, and group protection, as explained above.
Contributing factors to future investment include the status of schooling, training, access to job information, and proper guidance and counseling by professionals. By giving these scores to street children, it is possible to quantify theirplight, identify the group to which they belong, and devise the way to guidethem towards the right paths.
However, such measurement also has limitations especially withrespect to comparison and aggregation. Two variables may not be able to capture the complexity of the situation each child faces. For example, even if twochildren score the same in current protection, the first child may have good
health but little parental protection, and the second child may have the converse
situation. Having the same score does not mean that they suffer from the sameproblem or need the same intervention. This warning also applies to the scoringin future investment. Additionally, it is difficult to decide how much weight
each factor should receive in constructing such a score. Are job security andshelter equally important? Should formal schooling be given more points than
vocational training? Or should all factors receive one point each? This conun-

36

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

drum defies an easy solution. Any scoring system must therefore resort to sometentative convention.
Even so, giving numerical scores to the situation of each street child
may be a good first step towards an objective quantification of his or her plight,
supplementing narrative description.
Setbacks
While Group I children are stuck at the lower left corner of Figure 9,
Group II children (with their parents) attempt to climb upward, and Group III
children want to move closer to the bliss point in the upper right corner where
current protection and future investment are both available. But these movements are frequently interrupted by uncontrollable negative shocks that tend topull the children back to where they started, or worse. These setbacks are indicated in dashed arrows in Figure 9.
Accidental setbacks occur at two levels: individual shocks and macro(or societal) shocks. Shocks that befall the child or the child’s family partly
overlap with those that initially sent them to the street. They include family
problems, financial hardship, sickness, injury, assaults, psychological crisis,
drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and arrest and detention. By contrast, macro shocks
affect a broad segment of the society but hit vulnerable groups (including street
children) particularly harshly—for example, natural disasters, economic recession, fluctuation in tourism, bird flu and other epidemics, international events
that require clean streets, and seasonal business fluctuations. While all street
children must cope with both shocks, different groups are impacted differently.
These shocks have immediate and heavily negative influences onGroup I children, who are already in the worst situation. This is because theylack the knowledge to avoid such shocks as well as the risk-sharing mechanism to ameliorate the shocks once they occur. As a consequence, they are
more vulnerable to sickness, injury, financial hardship, and so forth, and more
susceptible to the temptation of social evils. They are caught in a hopelesstrap.
Children in Groups II and III are better off in the sense that they havemore protection and guidance from the parent or the group to which they
belong. But such protection and guidance are neither perfect nor available for37

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

all contingencies. If the shock becomes uncontrollable for the child (or his or
her friends or parents), there will be a slippage towards either downward or leftward, or both. The child may become hungry or sick, and may even quit studying. In the worst case, the child may lose the family or group protection andmigrate to Group I.

5. Former Street Children: Where are They Now?
5.1. Case studies
No survey has systematically tracked the same children over theyears. The number of street children is reported every year and many surveys
are conducted to describe the situation at any one point in time, but no study
seriously asks the questions of what happens to today’s street children when
they grow older, whether surveyed children are the same individuals examinedin previous surveys, or how many of the children of former street children
become a new generation of street children. This paper shares the same weakness as other studies13. However, we hope to provide some anecdotal evidence
on the long-term aspect of the street children problem so that the reader cansense the breadth of the problem. The information below was acquired throughpersonal contacts that the authors have had in Hanoi and HCMC since the mid1990s.
Paths traveled by street children to adulthood vary greatly from one
child to another. Some youths graduate from the status of precarious hand-tomouth living to a respectable career in the formal sector. This is achieved
through self-effort, good luck, and assistance from people who recognize theirlatent talent. On the other hand, it is hardly deniable that some unfortunate adolescents fall deeper and deeper into trouble until they destroy themselves or
become menaces to society. The majority of street children, however, seem to

13

One way to track the growth of children consistently is to analyze the records kept by sheltersthat house former street children until they reach the age of 17 or even above. Many domestic
and foreign organizations provide such assistance in Vietnam. However, such data may sufferfrom a winner’s bias because only the relatively successful children are admitted to shelters.
There are also many children these shelters do not accept because their conditions are too difficult to manage and their admission would have an undesirable effect on other children.

38

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

grow into street adults without meeting a brilliant success or a dreadful end.
Lacking education and a stable job, they continue to work in the street, manage
to make a living, get married, and raise a family while coping with the samerisk and uncertainty of street life they have known for a long time. Whether thechildren of such street adults will also become street children is an important
determining factor of the street children problem in the future. Many street
adults genuinely desire to send their children to school and terminate the generational vicious circle, but whether they can do so depends mainly on their financial situation.
As expected from the discussion in Section 4, Group I children havethe least chance to move up in the long run. In contrast, it is not uncommon to
see Group III children achieve academic and professional success. The
prospects of Group II children lie between these two cases. Below, six actual
cases are presented for illustration. Each case is classified into one of the threegroups based on the most important cause for street life. As noted earlier, however, the three causes overlap and interact with each other. The classification
here should be taken as only indicative. The age shown below is according to
the western calendar as of the end of 2004.
Miss A—Group I (broken family), age 19
The father of Miss A was a landless farmer in Hung Yen. He married
three wives consecutively. Miss A and her elder brother are the children of histhird wife. Miss A also had one younger brother but he was “stolen” in his
infancy and she says that is why her mother became a little crazy. Miss A has
one living half-sister whom she met only once. When Miss A was very young,the family traveled extensively in Vietnam to beg in locations including
HCMC, Hue and Hai Phong. In the past, the poor often traveled for free bytrain. But she does not remember much about these days.
In 1995, when Miss A was ten years old, the family “settled down” inHanoi. They slept outside the Big Church and continued to beg. The municipal
cleaning workers sometimes invited them to take shelter in their make-shifthouse while they were at work. A foreign priest helped Miss A to go to school
up to the sixth grade. Her parents were often caught by police and detained. At
one time, she was sent to live with an unmarried young couple. The lady there
forced her to sell postcards near Hoan Kiem Lake and to inhale an illegal drug.

39

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Since then, Miss A has been addicted to heroin.
The family subsequently moved to a humble shack in an area ofHanoi inhabited by migrants from outer provinces. Miss A continued to sell inthe street, her mother collected waste, and her elder brother was a shoe shiner aswell as a thief. Many individuals and NGOs tried to help her without much success. Recently, the father’s health deteriorated significantly during his four-year
detention at Ba Vi, a detention center. Miss A struggled to obtain the necessary
official documents and stamps to get him out.
In early 2004, her father was released from Ba Vi for the reason ofterminal weakness. After he passed away and her mother and brother wereagain caught by the police and sent to Ba Vi, Miss A became homeless. She
began to sleep alone outside, wear tattered clothes, and eat the leftover food ofothers. She fell and injured herself and could no longer go to Hoan Kiem Laketo earn money. She admits that she still can earn money to buy heroin by selling
drugs herself. Although she sometimes tries hard to escape from her fate, difficult circumstances and deep psychological wounds have made her distrustful ofothers. Her stubbornness as well as the lack of future investment makes it
extremely difficult for anyone to help her.
Miss B—Group II (economic migration), age 25
When Miss B was eight years old, her parents were divorced and she
and her younger sister were sent to live with their grandmother. Miss B went toschool in the morning and worked as a baby sitter and house maid in the afternoon. Although she was a very good student and a monitor at school, she had todrop out at the fifth grade because her family was too poor to pay the schoolfee. Two months later, she left the village for Hanoi with 50,000 VND in her
pocket. She has been working in Hanoi for the twelve years since that time.
At first, she bought miscellaneous things in Dong Xuan Market andsold them in the streets. Two years later, she began to study English and simultaneously go to Nguyen Van To school with the help of one foreigner. Whilecontinuing to sell in the street, Miss B attended evening classes. To savemoney, she spent only 1,000 dong on bread for her daily food.
After shifting from one job to another, Miss B became a receptionist
at a mini hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. She was very quick to learn newwork and gain experience. Her English was better than that of any other street

40

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

children. Recognizing her potential, another foreigner offered to be a business
partner to open a mini hotel of her own. It met with immediate success. Currently, Miss B is a manager of two mini hotels, both of which are profitable.
Miss B was an economic migrant who did not want to quit school to
become a street child in the first place. Although her parents were divorced, she
had the spiritual support of her mother and grandmother. She also had an insatiable desire and determination to become an entrepreneur. External financial
support was the only thing she needed to realize her dream.
Miss C—Group III (mindset problem), age 18
Miss C and her mother are from a village in Tien Giang, but they usually stay in a rented room in HCMC and sell coconuts in the heart of the city.
Miss C has no father but has one brother who is also a coconut seller. She cannot say clearly when she dropped out of school. The mother and the daughter
sell chilled coconuts together from early morning to late night or until all merchandise is sold. Sales are better on hot days and they rest on rainy days. Carrying dozens of coconuts, with loads weighing up to 30 kilograms, is a tough job
for a young girl. Like other sellers, Miss C is very good at running from thepolice.
Initially, Miss C spoke only Vietnamese with strong a southern accent.
Her writing was poor. But soon she picked up fragments of various languages,
including English, German, and Japanese, from foreigners. She likes to throw
dirty words at them. Some foreigners like to take her and her friends on a day
trip to Mekong. On major holidays like Tet or when major events are held in
HCMC, they return to Tien Giang to rest. Their house is simple and decent, andhas a TV and a video machine. Miss C hopes to get married with a German boy.
A local NGO in HCMC has tried to send her to an informal English
class. A modest financial sum was introduced to compensate for the lost sales
because her mother was unsure of the benefit of letting Miss C receive education. Many of her seller friends studied hard and subsequently received assistance in job training and placement, but Miss C skipped classes frequently andfinally dropped out. After Seagames 22, it became increasingly difficult to sellin the central districts of HCMC and the NGO sometimes loses track of thefamily.

41

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Mr. D—Group II (economic migration), age 26 if alive
The father of Mr. D passed away in 1990. Mr. D had no brother orsister. Leaving his mother in Ha Tay, he came to Hanoi in the early 1990s tosell postcards to foreign tourists. Although he had a few friends among the boy
sellers, he was basically alone in his work and life because he was the only one
from his village. He picked up English on the street and received modest assistance from foreigners to go to English courses. He also went to the driving
school but could not complete the lessons due to lack of money. He did notreceive any consistent training to get a stable job, so he continued to sell postcards. He was caught by the police and sent to the detention center a few times.
In 1999 he married a seller girl whom he knew for a long time, but hislife remained as hard as before. He was addicted to heroin and gradually lost his
weight and health. Two years ago, his friends reported his death. The cause waspneumonia related to his drug addiction.
Mrs. E—Group II (economic migration), age 23
In the mid-1990s, Mrs. E came from a village to sell postcards to foreigners in the Hoan Kiem Lake area and send money monthly to her parents.
She has both of her parents and three siblings. Her family is poor but not desperately poor in the village. She dropped out of school after the fifth grade andnever returned to formal schooling. Because she was in a large group of young
female sellers from the same village, she sold and slept with them in a rented
room. She received foreigners’ help in going to English and sewing classes. Her
English improved, but she was not successful in finding a stable job.
As the police crackdown on street vendors intensified over the years,
she switched to T-shirt sales away from the Hoan Kiem Lake area. In 1999 she
married a boy from the village next to hers and had a baby in the following
year. Now Mrs. E and her husband sell T-shirts together on a motorbike all
around Hanoi. The couple is still poor but they are happy with each other. However, Mrs. E realizes that their occupation is too unstable with the possibility ofofficial arrest, and wants to find better jobs for herself and her husband. At
present, she is seeking financial help from others to send her husband to a driving school. She herself is thinking of opening a small shop but people aroundher warn that it is a risky move if the shop fails.
Mrs. E feels it unfair that honest sellers like her are often detained

42

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

together with thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts and pushers, and other criminals.
These sellers are doing what is necessary to survive with no evil intention
towards society, she says. Another injustice she can hardly bear is the fact thatrich detainees are released quickly while poor people like her must do full timeat the detention center. But she knows that her protests are unlikely to be heard.
Mr. F—Group II (economic migration), age 22
Mr. F also came from the country side in a group to sell postcards inthe Hoan Kiem Lake area in 1998. His father died and his mother remarried, so
he and his younger sister were placed under the care of the grandparents.
Although his case may be classified as Group I (broken family), group protection and the existence of grandparents provided some initial security against
urban risks.
In his first few years of selling, Mr. F had no future plan; he did notknow what he wanted to learn or do. However, as street life became increasingly difficult due to the policy of cleaning up urban centers, he began to think
seriously about the next step. After studying travel guidebooks by himself, hebecame an unofficial tour guide for foreign backpackers. He also sought help
for getting a driver’s license (he received the money but sent it to his grandparents instead of going to the driving school).
Mr. F was caught by the police this summer. Because he tested positive for heroin, he is now being detained in one of the drug addiction centers in
Ba Vi. People like him can be locked up for as many as two years. Some saythat this is not too bad for him because he can be treated and has something to
eat there. But all agree that many former addicts start using heroin again upon
release. His sister, who married another seller recently, sometimes visits him in
Ba Vi.
5.2. How to guide street children towards the right paths?
The solution to the street children problem, which must be detailed
and realistic, needs to be discussed in full elsewhere. This section can merely
present some general suggestions that can be obtained directly from the above
analysis. Three mutually related points are given below.
First, a proper mix of current protection and future investment should
be available to each street child. A program to create appropriate conditions

43

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohnomust be designed and provided strategically and systematically for each street
child. This requires deep understanding and rich experience regarding the street
children problem. Assistance should not be casual or ad hoc.
Second, for every group of street children, proper external intervention
is required because it is very difficult for the child alone to overcome the barriers
to progress. Even in the relatively “easy” case of Group III (economic migrants)
with appropriate mindsets, like Miss B above, help from foreigners and fellow
Vietnamese were indispensable. For children in Groups I and II, external assistance is even more necessary for guiding them towards the right paths.
Third, for good intervention, analysis and planning based on an effective classification of street children is crucial. As mentioned earlier, street children are not homogeneous. Each child faces a different situation and requires
different help. Assistance must be consistent with the type and needs of children. Partial or unsuitable support will not only fail to achieve results but will
also waste the time and money of the supporters.
In this regard, Group I (broken family) is most difficult to assist. Children in this group generally lack the necessary attitude and discipline. Therefore, they require all-around, long-term and customized commitment, encouragement, and patience on the part of help providers for both current protection
and future investment, and for physical and mental assistance.
The main barrier for children in Group II (mindset problem) is theparent’s psychology. As this is difficult to change even with constant persuasion, a special tactic to provide children with an education opportunity is needed. This may require financial incentive for the parent or even temporary separation of the child from the parent. If the children themselves also have thewrong mindset, it is even more difficult to assist them.
Street children in Group III (economic migrants) need financial assistance. Unlike other groups, they are more often equipped with good motivationand family encouragement to overcome the poverty trap. For them, the main
assistance can be financial, supplemented by proper counseling and monitoring.
While they are the least difficult group to help, careful selection is extremely
important. Not all Group III children are honest or highly motivated, so the timeand money of the supporters should be allocated to the most serious candidates.

44Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

6. Concluding Remarks
The plight of street children in Vietnam is at an early stage in comparison with more “developed” neighboring countries. In Vietnam, mafia-like
crime groups of street children are relatively rare. Street children in Vietnam
produce a feeling of pity and sadness in the minds of the general public rather
than inspiring strong fear and repulsion. If there street children are involved insocial evils, we often consider them to be the victims of those evils rather thanconsidering them to be evil makers. We need to effectively tackle the street
children problem in Vietnam as soon as possible before it develops into a worse
situation.
Studying the interactions of old and new causes in a growing economy is just the starting point of research on street children. For simplicity, we did
not want to raise too many issues or questions in this paper, although we were
aware that the reality is far more complex. Before closing, we would like toleave a few suggestions for further study. Street children themselves and manysocial program coordinators agree that there are two important issues that must
be addressed seriously. First, there is a need to strengthen our skill in providing
counseling work to the children in guiding each child to the right path. Second,
after receiving certain education or training, children need additional help in
applying their acquired knowledge to the real situation. A training program or ashort course is not sufficient. They need more incentive and assistance to securea stable job and build a family—to live a normal life in society.

References

Committee of Population, Family and Children, Information Center. 2003a. Ket qua
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Committee of Population, Family and Children, Information Center. 2003b. Bao cao
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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

Related Websites
http://www.chula.ac.th/INSTITUTE/ARCM/child5.htm
http://www.unicef.org/vietnam/street.htm
http://www.streetfriends.org/CONTENT/background/what_are_sc.html
http://www.vwam.com/vets/children/introduction.htm
http://www.worldbank.org/data/dataquery.html

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