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Fourteen-year old Aithone’s lips are pursed in concentration as she draws a picture. A pretty face with wide eyes and long lashes, much like her own, is surrounded by a bright yellow sun, edged with flames. She signs her name and writes in bold letters: “Still alive!”
It’s a defiant statement from a girl who faces threats to her life and health every day on the streets of Davao City in the southern island of Mindanao. “When you are in the streets you might get stabbed or raped,” Aithone explains.
Two hundred street girls like Aithone find a haven from the dangers of the streets at a drop-in centre run by tambayan, Save the Children’s partner organization. During the day the girls hang out at the centre where they can have a bath, cook food, wash their clothes, attend alternative school and take part in activities that give them a new outlook on their lives.
“After I took part in an art workshop, my drawings were put in an exhibition,” Aithone says. “They were so alive, they made me believe in myself. I believe I can go back to school and that my life doesn’t end here on the streets.”
Aithone took to the streets to escape family poverty and neglect. She was brought up by her grandmother in a tiny shack after her mother left to find work in the capital, Manila. “I don’t have a place to sleep,” Aithone explains. “If I had a choice I wouldn’t have run away from home.”
Rapid industrialization has forced hundreds of thousands of Filipino families off the land into crowded cities where they can barely scratch a living. Family separation, violence and crime are rife. For many teenagers, taking to the streets is a preferred option to poverty and abuse at home. Instead they join gangs which become their extended family.
But although there’s support within gangs, there are violent fights with other gangs over territory. Drug taking is also rife. Aithone’s cousin Jenny Ann, aged 15, explains why: “I wouldn’t be involved in street life if it wasn’t for my broken family. Sometimes I lose confidence in myself --- that’s why I take drugs. For an hour you forget your problems.” Jenny Ann now enjoys learning math at the drop-in centre and dreams of working as a cashier in a department store.
The authorities’ response to the emergence of street children has been to launch a harsh crackdown. There’s a curfew on children being outside between 10pm and 4am. Arrests are common – even when children step outside to escape the tropical heat in their one-room shanties.
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This story was first featured in WORLD'S CHILDREN Summer 2003 issue, a publication of Save the Children UK. Kate O'Malley visited the Philippines in February 2003.
Most of the girls have experienced abuse at the hands of police or other arresting officials. “The police suggest you can be released if you allow yourself to be ‘used’,” Aithone says. Jenny Ann was arrested for sniffling glue. “They grabbed me by the neck and hit me in the stomach. I wanted to tell them: “What sort of police officers are you? You’re supposed to protect children,’”
But there’s an even bigger fear hanging over the street children. “I’m scared of death,” Jenny Ann says. “I’m scared that somebody might try to kill me.” In the last four years over 100 street children and adults have been killed. “We’ve heard of al lot of boys being murdered by the Davao Death Squad,” Aithone says. There are accusations that the murders are being committed by contractors linked to officials, as part of Davao City’s clean-up crime campaign.
Save the Children’s partner Tambayan is campaigning vocally about the killings, demanding official investigations and monitoring street children’s safety.
“I’m scared to die when I haven’t fulfilled my dreams,” Aithone says. “I want to go back to school and find work.” 
 PHOTO WORKSHOP
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