The Toybox vision is of a world with no street children

Toybox works through local people and projects to reach street-involved children who are living and working on the streets of major cities, or who are at high risk in other ways. We help children who are living on the streets, working on the streets, and those at high risk of going to live on the streets. Collectively, these children are known as ‘street-involved’ children.

Toybox partners with local people to deliver ‘Red Alert’ a special way of working that is now successfully operating in Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and El Salvador. Red Alert uses Prevention, Outreach and Advocacy to help us work towards a world with no street children.

Prevention

Toybox believes that prevention is better than cure. We work with children who are at ‘high risk’ of becoming street-living children, giving them support and education through networks of community projects. These high-risk children include those living in extreme poverty or in prison with their families, working children, children who have suffered physical and mental abuse and those who have been abandoned or orphaned. Prevention work includes providing educational support, vocational training opportunities, and day care; as well as work with families and parents.

Outreach

Every day the teams we support in Latin America are meeting the most urgent immediate needs of children living and working on the streets. Street educators search out the most vulnerable children, offering friendship, food, first-aid counseling and educational support. Toybox teams also help children to come off the streets, reintegrating them with family members where possible and appropriate, or finding them new homes where they will be cared for and loved.

Advocacy

To make a lasting difference, we need an environment where vulnerable children and their families are supported, and street living children are protected and provided for. This means changing government policies and practice, communities and families. Toybox is working with governments at a local, national and international level to raise awareness and change things for street children. Our Child Ambassadors lead community campaigns to raise awareness and call for change – in this way we are empowering street children to speak up for their rights.

Impact of Red Alert

Through the prevention, outreach and advocacy work of the Red Alert projects Toybox is helping over 15,000 children a year in five cities across four countries.

Read More:

Prevention: Prevention Projects | Education and Vocational Training | Family and Reintegration

Outreach: On the streets | Refuge and Homes

Advocacy: Ambassadors | In Latin America | In the UK

Further Information:

Why there are street children
Street children facts
The Bigger Picture

Street children in Guatemala
Street children in Bolivia
Street children in Peru
Street children in El Salvador