A consistant ethic on human dignity...

Taken from Chi Huang's "When Invisible Children Sing"

On pondering what happens to street children

What happens to street children when they grow up? Obviously some of them do not grow up. Some die on the street, their spirits going, we hope, to a better place. Some of them survive. Which is better, dying or living? An argument can be made for either side. Little is known about what happen when street children grow up. Researchers do not follow individual street children over the years of their lives. Researchers take collective "snapshots" of the population of street children. They interview them about their past sometimes. They watch them over a period of a few days, a few months even. But the world really does not want to know how many of them are killed by the elements, by disease, by other street people, by adult perpetrators; how many commit suicide; how many become street adults; how few survive and find a home and a sustainable role in the world.

In reference to a girl met on the streets in Bolivia

You expect to be treated like garbage so you're never disappointed. You cauterize your heart. No one can hurt a dead girl. And yet who am I to tell you that you are alive? What good will it do if you believe you're a human being and one else does? Can you survive on the streets if you insist on being treated with dignity? Can a street child afford self-worth? All God's children are created equal. But who really lives as if they believe this? One first world baby stuck at the bottom of a well generates more heartfelt anxiety than the 100 million children trapped on the streets of the developing world ever will.