Children of Today, Citizens of Tomorrow

Childhood is that special time when the world is perceived as a place of wonder and fantasy in which all is clean and new and brimful of promise or, at least that is how childhood is supposed to be.
For an increasing number of children though, this is certainly not the case as, for them, the world is a dangerous jungle in which they must fight to survive on many fronts at once: preyed on by sexual perverts, exploited by adult criminals in search of easy loot, forced to work almost as soon as they can walk, often hungry, miserable and downright physically abused, life is not as it should be and sadly, for the majority of such children, will never amount to much if anything at all.
We see them working on the streets of major cities and towns, the length and breadth of the country. This major ‘problem’ is not restricted to Pakistan by the way, but is visible all around the world in varying degrees, and the majority of people view them as nothing more than pariahs if, that is, they bother to notice them at all and few consider that old maxim - “there but for the grace of God go I.”
It is not the fault of the children that they are in this predicament; it is the fault of the society as a whole. Yet, there are few organisations and individuals, who are actually prepared to attempt to get these children off the streets, to give them the care and attention they so desperately need and, let’s face it, deserve if they are ever going to have the slightest chance of living some kind of reasonable life and, one of the ways this can be achieved is via education. There are a few dedicated people, who are trying and trying very hard to ease the plight of street children and the children of the very poor by providing them with some form of education - be this in what have become known as ‘garage schools’ or similar setups - but, laudable as this is, it is far from being enough and is certainly not enough to make even a visible dent in the ‘problem’.
As inflation soars, the...