Street children in urban Nepal: Boy's lives on streets and in shelters

In recent decades the global number of children living and working on the streets has risen dramatically, becoming the focus of considerable anthropological research. Visible examples of street children in Kathmandu and other urban centers in Nepal appeared by the late 1980s, when concerned Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started to take notice and launch programs intended to help these children.; This thesis examines a representative sample of street children in Kathmandu through their lived experiences on the street and in an NGO-run shelter. This thesis is based on 4 and 1/2 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Nepal. An internship was established at a drop-in shelter run by Child Workers In Nepal (CWIN), one of the first NGOs to take on child's rights issues in the country. The other primary location where fieldwork was conducted was on the streets of Thamel, the tourist district in Kathmandu and a favored spot among street children.