Homeless Teens at School

I visited a drop-in center for street kids in Mexico City when I was there last spring, a place with couches, a computer, showers, and food. I was grateful that there was someplace the many homeless kids in that neighborhood could go, and after getting acquainted with the man who directed it, I left some money and vowed to myself to find some more once I got back home.


Now I read that there are street kids right here in Manchester, teens who can't live at home and don't have anyplace else. Too young to go to the shelter, it's not at all clear where they sleep or how they eat. And some of them are making the heroic effort to attend school in the middle of all that. What's up with this?

Little by little, we bring the so-called less developed world home. Kids on their own, rightly or wrongly believing the foster care system would not be better, undetected by an overburdened system until registering for school brings matters to official attention, they really live here in this little Yankee city. And surely there are more kids, the ones who have decided not to try to keep on with school.

I feel ashamed to know this about my city, and I don't know what to do.