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(DIN OF TRAFFIC)
WOMAN: The numbers here are enormous.
I mean, even the child labour numbers are at 4 million.
We've got 250,000 kids living on the street.
I mean, they're not small numbers, there's no doubt about it.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Hi.
They're the street-based kids living on the streets,
neglected, abused.
I'm the chief of child protection for UNICEF in the Philippines.
So our program goes all across the whole of the Philippines.
We deal with all the different forms of exploitation,
so the trafficking, the child sex tourism,
the *** exploitation of children,
down to children that are in conflict with the laws.
Trafficking in children is the second-biggest trade in the world.
It's only second to drug trafficking.
So the amount of billions of dollars that are raised throughout the world
just to buy and sell children
is enormous.
The US State Department estimates 800,000 women and children
are trafficked every year... in and out of the Philippines.
(DANCE MUSIC PLAYS)
With funding from AusAID,
UNICEF is working closely with Filipino agencies
on an ever-widening range of programs
to address the issue,
like this drop-in shelter for boys in central Manila.
MAN: Our policy in what we call the recovery shelter
is a voluntary, open-door policy.
So every child who's here is here because they want to be here.
What do you put on it to make it smell?
They have a psychologist that's here
and they have social workers that work with them and their families.
But most of these boys
don't really have families that are accepting of them.
So this is a way for them to still get their education
and to keep out of trouble.
Education is the key,
and Natalie and her UNICEF team
are engaged in numerous alternative pathways.
One of them uses an open-air classroom for street kids.
(TEACHER SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
They're 15, 16 and 17
and they're studying... what are they studying today?
Even with these boys, we haven't given up on them,
in spite of their age.
And they're very willing to learn, given the motivation.
They're working very hard today. Yeah.
This alternative approach to education
gives the kids access to learning
even in their difficult circumstances.
KIDS: Good morning...
(LAUGHS) Good morning.
This school, in a converted church, is adjacent to Smokey Mountain,
where tens of thousands scavenge for a living
on Manila's largest dump site.
Estimates put the population of surrounding slums at 600,000.
Most of them are working with their families on the dump sites.
There's only one high school in this whole area
and tens of thousands of children,
so this is a very small contribution to a very large issue.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
It's a great opportunity, but you see the size of the area outside.
We're only able to accommodate 104.
Really, since the financial crisis, we've found an increase
in families that are actually living on the streets.
In inner-city Manila, it's not just street kids
but entire families whose home is a sheet of plastic against the wall.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
(KIDS SPEAK LOCAL LANGUAGE)
We've got our mobile educator,
who's doing educational classes for the kids
that live on the street.
(SONG PLAYS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Inside the van... It's a multipurpose van.
It has DVD players, computers, even wireless internet inside
and it enables our educators, our street educators,
to deliver classes wherever.
UNICEF directs the most vulnerable children into facilities
with 24-hour care.
It's a home for orphans,
abandoned, neglected, labour-exploited,
witnesses to heinous crimes, street children.
So the Australian football federation gave us the jerseys
and the A-League footballs.
They play soccer. They play basketball.
Our training skills are cosmetology, carpentry, wood trades, sewing,
electronics.
And then we have already a job placement for them.
When the sun sets on Manila, another group of children starts working.
(PEOPLE CALL OUT)
On some of the world's busiest streets, children as young as five
are surviving by the few pesos they get for hailing taxis and buses
for passengers.
Keeping an eye on their wellbeing is a former street kid
who's now a UNICEF peer educator.
MAN: So when the passenger and the taxi driver says it's OK
because it's more cheaper,
so then the contact is good, so they get paid for that.
But Butch actually was originally one of the street children
that was helped by one of the projects.
That was over 15 years ago now,
so he's been now doing this for over 15 years.
And he's brilliant at it.
And probably because he understands, he has empathy with these children,
he manages to get them on board
and help them very successfully to either change their lives
or to get them services and help.
Most have been abandoned by their parents.
Their other options are petty crime or starvation.
They sleep in parks and use the bathrooms of fast-food restaurants.
BUTCH: They look at these kids as the dregs of society,
so nobody would really understand them.
So, UNICEF, what they're doing now is funding us, helping us
so that these kids will be aware of how to protect themselves
against abuses.
One of our programs now, we also use ex-child sex workers
to work with kids that are actually in child sex work right now
to try and help them get through what they're going through.
And it seems to work. It's like peer to peer.
It's a far cry from traditional forms of education
but is a vital part of the work of Natalie and her Filipino team
as they help these children find a path out of poverty.
I want to help them all
but I think the possibility of being able to help
at least one child in that day gets me going
because you don't know who that child's gonna be.