Lynne Morris, CEO from UK charity, Toybox, explains how they’ve been busy giving the gift of birthdays to children without them.
“Despite 2020 being a difficult year for many, it’s been a momentous one for us here at Toybox. We’ve registered a milestone number of births and given the gift of a birthday to almost 6,200 street children across the world. The latest research indicates one in four children are unregistered globally, so as well as having a ‘birthday’ to mark their lives, the children whose births we register receive an official identity, access to healthcare, education, and employment.
If you don’t have your birth registered, it just sets you up to fail. There’s no other way of looking at it. Without having an official identity there’s no access to education, healthcare, employment, or benefits of any kind. You’re not even able to be buried in an official cemetery, which is just heart breaking.
For want of another word, you’re invisible, and for a child living on the streets, this isn’t okay.
This is why we began our birth registration work. The projects started in Guatemala in 2014 and since then we’ve expanded our work to reach Nepal, Bolivia and El Salvador. Our team and partners work hard to identify unregistered street children, and then support them through the legal and administrative process of getting identity documents, not to mention educating the children about their basic rights, including the right to a birth certificate.
It’s such an incredible feeling to be able to make a huge and truly impactful difference to the lives of these children, and help them on their journey, ultimately, taking away their invisibility and giving them a real identity.”
Anyone looking to help more children receive a birth certificate can do so by visiting www.toybox.org.uk/birthcertificate
