Jon Bellamy spoke with Emily Fyson

Emily Fyson

Street children in Latin America are being robbed of their childhood. But every day, Toybox offers these forgotten children the chance of a brighter future. A testimony on their website says "The only thing that I wish, is to be able to study, so when I become an adult I can be a good police officer to defend people in need, and to help change my country for the better." Josue

With Easyjet supporting Toybox over the summer, Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Emily Fyson to find out more.

Jonathan: Now if you're travelling abroad on Easyjet this summer you will be offered a toy bear called Gulliver. To tell us more about teddy Gulliver we have on the line Emily Fyson who's the Communications and Fundraising executive for Toybox. Sounds like a great partnership that you've got going with Easyjet. How did it come about?

Emily: Well basically Easyjet phoned us up and they were looking to support work with street children and found Toybox. The partnership grew from that. So we're really excited to be working with them and bringing this special teddy bear to all Easyjet flights between July and September 2009.

Jonathan: That must have been a lovely surprise to get really, out of the blue, because obviously there's a lot of captive audiences going off on summer holidays on Easyjet, aren't there?

Emily: Absolutely, yeh. I mean as people travel they're often looking for something to buy to take home as a present for their family or their kids. It's just great that this little teddy bear can help out street children in Latin America every time he's bought. So we're really really pleased.

Jonathan: Now it started in July; any idea of the take up so far in little Gulliver?

Emily: Well we're looking to sell three thousand Gullivers, and ten percent of all the profit is going to help the street children. So, he just costs £10 and from each Gulliver sold, 50p will go directly to help the projects that are working with the children on the streets in Guatemala, Bolivia and in Peru. It's quite interesting because Easyjet don't fly to these countries but it's great that they're still willing to step outside that and help children across the globe and especially in Latin America, which people seem to forget about. So we're really delighted about that.

Jonathan: Tell us a little bit more about the work of Toybox. How did you get started?

Emily: Well we started back in 1992 when a UK couple saw a documentary on the BBC called, 'They Shoot Children Don't They'. That described the lives of children living on the streets in Guatemala City, where things are desperately hard for many many children. The police are often not a help to these kids. They actually pursue them and treat them pretty much as rubbish. The kids have to live on the rubbish dumps of the city. They have to scrounge a living in whatever way they can. It's a very tough situation for many children. I mean, lots of those kids will never even see a teddy bear let alone own one for themselves. So it's kind of touching that by buying a teddy you can help kids who don't have any toys to play with at all, in many cases. So what Toybox does is to help these kids with food, with providing a family, shelter; the opportunity to learn and to have an education. The opportunity to overcome their past and the things that they've suffered. To just have a full life; to learn about Jesus and just yeh to have the full life that they deserve.

Jonathan: I understand that there's estimated to be about forty million children in this kind of situation across the whole of Latin America. What kind of feedback have you had of actual impact that Toybox has had over the last seventeen years?

Emily: Well since we began, we've expanded our work so we now work in Guatemala, but also in Bolivia; in two cities there and in Peru. We're able to reach around about fifteen thousand children a year. That's obviously having a huge impact on their lives and we hear fantastic stories. For example, there's one baby girl called Gabriella who was abandoned on the street by her mother when she was ten months old, and her mum was actually a prostitute. She couldn't care for Gabriella anymore so she just abandoned her. This is in Guatemala City and there are actually - that's one child abandoned every four days in Guatemala City, it's a huge problem. But anyway fortunately Gabriella was found and she was taken to one of the Toybox projects, where they were able to help her. She is now living with others sisters of the same age as her. She's safe and she's grown up into a really fun, intelligent and affectionate eight year old girl. That's just one story; but there are hundreds and hundreds of stories like that across all our projects. So although the figure forty million children can seem really daunting, the approach that we take at Toybox is that every child is worth it and if you can help one child that's enough.

Jonathan: It's a great work and it's excellent what you're doing with Toybox. If people want to get hold of a Gulliver bear to support what you're doing. They might not be getting on a plane this summer, what can they do to support what you're doing where do they go?

Emily: Well, the very best way to help Toybox and to help the street children is to think about becoming a child sponsor. We have a programme where you can link to a child and the best way to find out about that is on Toybox, the website, which is www.toybox.org.uk You can also find out more about our work and what we do and other ways you can get involved.

Jonathan: Emily, thank you very much. I hope you do sell those three thousand teddy Gullivers and also that you get loads more child sponsors. That'll be great to hear.