| Serious concerns about street children in Indonesia started emerging after the 1997 economic crisis. Observers agreed that increasing numbers of urban families were relying on children’s street-based work as their primary source of income. Directly after the crisis, the ADB sponsored Atma Jaya University to map street children in 12 cities, noting the numbers of children and the types of work they were doing. When USAID awarded the Urban Street Children Empowerment & Support program in 2000, the Indonesian government estimated there were about 40,000 street children in its 12 largest cities. |