Sol de Primavera focuses its work on children between nine and 18 years of age. The reason for this is that it is common for projects in Quito to be aimed at at younger children but there are few projects for their transition into professional life (formation projects).

There’s no such thing as THE street child but rather the real-life situation of these children is shaped by different factors. What they do have in common is they do spend a certain amount of their daytime roaming the street, be it to work, to play, to sleep or just generally. The majority do maintain contact to one or another family figure and only few spend the cold nights outside on the streets.

The children in the project are all “Jóvenes en riesgo de la calle”, children with a high risk of ending up totally on the streets. The domestic relations are often very unstable so that the children live between a home and the street which also entitles them with the name “doorstep children”. The cognitive and social abilities as well as their movement capabilities are often underdeveloped and many can barely read, write and calculate. It would be deceptive to see those doorstep children only in the role of the victim - in every such child there is a potential which is evident in the way that they often maintain the house, bargain on the local market, develop successful survival strategies or care for their younger siblings - The children should thus never be stigmatised as hopeless victims; rather they should be assisted and challenged according to their abilities.