Shanty Town

[Bnewb]

Having little kids sent by the parents to pull on the heartstrings of tourists for a cash handout is not cool, and begging is probably not a great lesson to learn at such a young age. We're not talking one or two... we're talking more than a dozen young children, and slightly older ones selling bracelets.

Why not have them sell something useful? Snacks on a pub crawl? Hells yes! How many bags of chips or cookies or candy bars do you think they could have sold, and actually earned the money, and learned a much more positive lesson?

Harry...I think one or two is just as bad as a dozen children begging. And, they have sold more than bracelets...they were selling chocolate bars a few years back.
We talked to more than a couple of children about getting their butts back in school...we encouraged them to become educated business people instead of skipping classes and begging off tourists and losing out on their schooling, etc. Thankfully we were lucky with a couple of boys.

In the ensuing years...more children started to show up as tourists continued to bring items and hand over money to them. As I mentioned in my previous post, the issue intensified because Lenbert was asked to take people into areas that get bypassed and don't directly benefit from tourism...these visitors had items they wanted to give to the children. As more tourists heard about bringing gifts/candy/money during the pub crawl...the children were naturally excited to receive these gifts...and again the number of children increased following the bus around.

It's become a double edged sword for Lenbert...as now the children are expecting gifts/money and many of the Love Bus Crawlers are wanting to give to the children...when or how does Lenbert stop it?

Personally...I wish people would donate to places such as the NEET project or St. Anthony's soup kitchen or any of the outlining schools...rather than handing gifts/money over to a random child.