The United Nations estimate there to be 100 million street children worldwide.

"Being poor is in itself a health hazard; worse, however, is being urban and poor. Much worse is being poor, urban, and a child. But worse of all is being a street child in an urban environment.”

Ximena de la Barra, senior urban advisor, UNICEF (UN Commission on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment no. 14, August 2000 – UN doc E/C.12/2000/4)

• An estimated 40 million children live on the streets of Latin America's densely populated cities (Unicef).
• These street children include: children living on the street with no home at all, children spending most of their time on the streets, without opportunities for education and care; and child workers who spend most of their time working on the street e.g. shoe-shining in Bolivia or selling tortillas in Guatemala.
  
• Toybox seeks to help all these street children but especially those at highest risk and without any home at all.
  
• Working with street children can be very costly work as these children usually need a long period of rehabilitation. It can take many months or years to firstly build up their trust, as they have normally endured only pain and abuse from adults. So it is a longterm work of commitment and rarely a quick fix that they need to help them release their potential.
  
• Observers from our partner in Guatemala say that street children there have a life expectancy of around four years on the street.
  
• In addition to street children, there are thousand more children living at very high risk. Toybox helps both.
  
• According to Unicef, some 75,000 severely malnourished children have been identified in Guatemala in 2005, a consequence of three simultaneous emergencies: chronic poverty, drought and the coffee crisis. Some 67 per cent of indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
  
• Unicef also reported in 2004 that in Guatemala in the first 10 months of 2002, gangs or security forces killed 408 children and youths, but most street children were killed by drive by shootings.

Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says: "Every child has the right to express his/her own views freely in all matters affecting them."

Here's what the children say:

"If a dream could become real, it would be to live with my family and have a different life." Jose

"To live on the streets is so sad. If my dream could come true, it would be to have a life without drugs." Alfredo

"Life on the street is like a prison because you are mistreated." Miguel

Read more:

Why there are street children
Street children in Guatemala
Street children in Bolivia
Street children in Peru