SWO Plan for Sheltering Street Girls

The State Welfare Organization plans to identify and shelter girls with negligent or abusive parents, according to head of the SWO’s socially vulnerable groups.

“Under a new project, we will search and identify girls who are living away from home in groups at undisclosed shelters run by street mafia, or have negligent and/or abusive parents who force them to beg on the streets.

We will bring them to our centers known as ‘health homes’ to stay safe and get tested and treated,” if they have a disease, Faranak Imani told ILNA on Thursday.

The socially vulnerable girls will be categorized into two groups. First, those who have contracted some type of disease including HIV/AIDS, and are willing to go back to a normal life and their family but have no means of doing so. In the second group those who are not willing to go back will be provided with pertinent services.

“Some of the girls have been exposed to severe social harm but there is hope to alleviate their plight and protect them from social challenges,” Imani added. They can stay at the ‘health homes’, away from their destructive living environments, where “we will provide them with education and training.”

Noting that a majority of street children and those in forced labor have parents and a place to sleep at nights, she said such children are brought to the SWO centers occasionally by NGOs, and when they visit, they are provided with health education, and get tested for any potential viral diseases. “We provide the sick with treatment.”

“Last year, 200 visited our centers due to lack of a safe place to stay, which is negligible compared to the number (1.5 million) of street children out there.”