A complex web of factors conspires to tear lives apart in this region that has been ravaged by economic, political, and social upheaval.
A father dies of health conditions, and the widow cannot provide for her children to eat. She gives them heroin, unaware of the negative effects, to help numb the hunger and pain. The children must drop out of school to sell plastic bags or shine shoes on the streets to hopefully make enough money to eat. These children grow up without the necessary education to secure good jobs, and so the cycle of poverty continues.
This is a story that has happened to hundreds of thousands of families, in many different ways, all over the region.
Children are abandoned by parents who cannot take care of them. Some children’s parents and would-be caretakers are killed in war. Others are born to unwed mothers, often women who are raped. Yet others aren’t welcome in the context of second marriages, which are an economic necessity for widows.
