Street Children - Who are They?

My hotel in Davao was just across the street from a park and there were many street children who called the park home. I actually didn't understand the street child while I was there. It was only after I returned home and started researching them I discovered the shocking facts that has forever made their plight a cause my heart is dedicated to. You may at this point wonder what this has to do with outsourcing, but it is very much related to outsourcing and I will bring this all together in the stories ahead.

Dr. Chuck Frost is someone I discovered who has spent the last decade and a half getting to know these kids and fighting for their cause. I have not yet met him, but I plan to and when I do I hope to learn much. In the meantime I hope you learn as much as I did from this video which is in my opinion the most definitive work in short form I have found that details who these children are.

Boom Boom

I left my room at the APO View Hotel one morning around 6:00 AM to walk down the street one block to an ATM.

(Unrelated side note: Even upscale hotels in the Philippines often don't have ATM machines for security reasons and banks generally have security on guard during business hours packing heat and holding loaded double barrel shotguns. It is a much different feeling than walking into a bank in the US.)

As I was standing at the outside ATM a young girl approached me. She was perhaps 13 or 14 and wearing short shorts and a skimpy top, but still obviously a child. She smiled at me with these beautiful brown eyes and tilted her head downward and looked up at me in a questioning way and said "Boom Boom?"

I shook my head without saying anything wanting her to leave me alone and let me get my money. She put her hand on her hip and pouted.

"Only 500 pesos and I good boom boom."

My heart nearly stopped. What this child had just told me was she wanted to have sex with me for ten dollars. I looked down at her and I said."Honey, I am an old man. I am nearly 60 years old. I don't boom boom and even if I did it wouldn't be with a little girl your age."

"But I like 60 year old men."

"Well I like little girls too, for granddaughters and great granddaughters, but not for boom boom."

I decided I didn't like this situation at all and left the ATM without finishing my transaction because my concentration had been completely shaken. I began walking back to the hotel and little Boom Boom kept walking along beside me.

"You no like me?" she asks, trying to make me feel guilty. She may be a child, but she is pulling out all the stops to try to salvage the sale.

I reach hotel property and she starts to walk off, still looking at me and smiling with a pout. I actually have to question myself about how I feel. In some ways I laugh because there was a bit of humor in a few of her actions, but underneath it all was terrible sadness. Why would a child be out selling herself at six in the morning and doing it with such enthusiasm and obvious experience?

As westerners we have a lot to learn about the people of the Philippines. Not only do they live in a country that is plagued with poverty, but it is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

I was going to have the Davao mayor on this segment, but I want to give what you saw today time to settle in before you see what you are going to see tomorrow. There are many who see these children as rodents and want them eliminated the same way rats are eliminated and are actively working to do so. Many think the mayor is behind it all. So instead of Friday I will be back tomorrow with the Mayor of Davao and more on the "death squads" of Davao who are murdering these street children at the rate of about 300 a year in the name of ridding the streets of crime.

An Eye for an Eye Only Makes the World Go Blind - Outsourcing America continues Thursday.