Chow Kit: Child care centre for homeless

Chow Kit: Child care centre for homeless

Chow Kit Road is less than a kilometer away from heart of Kuala Lumpur. Life there is cheap, riddled with poverty, drugs, sex and children wandering the street, hungry. Hundreds of them are homeless.

Al Radjhi bank together with an NGO and the Social Welfare Department had setup a child care centre for these underprivileged children.  

Many of the parents who send their children to this child care work in brothel-based industries and are single mothers. They are poor and can’t afford to send their children to commercial child care centers while working. Most of them are homeless or renting cheap budget rooms on daily basis for shelter.

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While working, the kids are left on streets or shops vulnerable to the threat of pimps, drug pushers and child trafficking. Realizing the need to protect these kids, the parties concerned started the centre approximately a year ago.

The child-care centre gives them basic education, 6 meals a day and all the basic necessities that a growing child needs. The parents are given some responsibilities too, such as providing the kids with clothing, collaborating the staff to spruce up the centre on a weekly basis and joining their kids for educational tours.

As the centre is providing great service to these underprivileged kids, they are expanding to another floor of the current centre to cater for kids who are aged 6 and above.

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Currently they are operating from 7.00am to 7.00pm daily.

Video by Vijay Kumar Rahman, Citizen Journalist

Vijay Kumar