No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
Pythagore
BEA is based in Saint-Louis, one of the biggest cities in Senegal, where thousands of children are street beggars.
Who are those children?
The economic disparities between rural and urban areas, as well as between bordering countries and Senegal, urged many families to go into exile towards Senegalese big cities. So, in Dakar, Mbour, Saint-Louis, Kaoloack and Zinginchor, it is common to meet wandering children a bowl in the hand in search of a handful of rice or some coins.
Among these children, we distinguish:
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Street children, they beg for food and money during the day and sleep with their family.
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Children living in the street, sent to town for begging, they sleep in the street.
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Talibé children (boys from 5 to 18 years old), sent to a daara (i.e. Koranic school headed by a marabout) where they stay for several years, they beg for food and money during the day and sleep in their daara.
The economic crises of the last thirty years saw multiplying the unscrupulous number of "false marabouts" who do not hesitate to open daaras in disastrous conditions, where studying Koran is only a pretext for exploiting children. Children have to fulfill daily a sum to the marabout, at the risk of violent reprisals, but also manage to find food. Left to their own devices, they sometimes have no other choices but the recourse to prostitution.
All these children have in common to live in precarious conditions of hygiene, health and nutrition, which are convenient to the development of diseases and infections (e.g. scab, conjunctivitis / Apollo). Removed from school, they do not know either how to read or to write. BEA is mobilized to improve the living conditions of these children, and help them build a future far from begging.