Brazil hosts “mini-Olympics” to focus on street children

World Today

As Brazil prepares for this year’s Olympics, former homeless children from around the globe are staging the Street Child Games.

It’s a charity Olympic-themed competition that aims to highlight the plight of millions of children who live and work on the streets.

CCTV America’s Lucrecia Franco reports.

A literal “mini-Olympics” with kids from five continents, all of them former street children, gathered in Rio to represent one of the world’s most marginalized populations.

The games are organized by a non-profit group that organizes parallel competitions in countries hosting mega-sporting events to create awareness of the 150 million children that the U.N. says are forced to live on the streets.

Teams from nine countries, from India to Argentina, are here. Boys and girls, aged 16 to 19, are competing in six events, after training hard with the help of their local NGO’s.

The games slogan is “I am somebody”, a message these kids, who have been at risk on the streets, want to send the world ahead of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.

The games are more than a sport competition. These kids say the games are also a call to recognize the rights of homeless children.