Despite increasing pressure to provide not only beds but, in many cases food, assistance in finding employment, day care and rehabilitation counseling these local shelters keep their doors open. Today with federal and state funding being cut for all services shelters are forced to rely more and more on private donations. Children grow up in anonymity without a birth certificate and 1.3 million never attend school. They know violence and abandonment, hunger and disease. If they make a despairing flight to the streets, their lives are wasted by crime and drugs.
Death awaits many.
In Vitoria, street kids are imprisoned, the city's only answer to an overwhelming problem. Here, boys and girls with potential waste away their days in dank, dark cells, knowing nothing but fear. Here children find acceptance, hot meals, a warm bed, health care, counseling, an academic education and even vocational training. The local government in Vitoria, Espirito Santo, has recognized the value of this solution for its lost, imprisoned children and has contributed a l00 acre former state orphanage as the site for this new home. By 2001 HUI will be housing, educating and caring for 80 boys from the prisons and streets of Vitoria - a joyous new day for children who once languished alone in prison.