Second-world child - Need Advice

34 points

18 years ago

I'm Canadian, but I live in Turkey since last December. Yesterday I was chatting with a kid on the street. His story was not super-sad, but still. He's working every day after school for about 5-6$. He uses that money to buy bread for his family (the bread here is horribly white, it's not a great idea). Some days he doesn't eat. He could be a smart kid, but his response-time was slow, and he had that glaze in his eyes, presumably from the bad nutrition. He was also awfully short for a 16 year-old.

He has 5 brothers, the older 2 dropped out of school already. Here's the interesting bit: he wants to be an electrical engineer. Ambitious. From what I can tell, his chances of getting into uni are very, very slim. It's competitive. At the same time, if he makes it, he can probably get state support, and he has a shot at a decent living.

He was very enthusiastic about computers. There are cheap internet cafes here, but his English is very limited.

I don't have much illusions about his chances of pulling himself out of this on his own, even with the best advice in the world. Still, it's worth a try, so I took his email. So far, I'm thinking:

- Learn to read English.

- Replace the bread with bulgur. It has a good price/nutrition ratio AFAIK.

I also thought of WOW gold farming, and pointing him to python.org. It seems far-fetched though. In Turkey, you can't get a job without a diploma. Any ideas?

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