If you ever visited Senegal you were probably shocked by the amount of young kids begging on the streets. These are the talibés. Literally meaning ‘Quranic student,’ these kids are sent by their parents at a young age to a faraway city, such as Saint Louis, to study the fundamentals of Islam. While parents think they are giving their children the best education, the reality is that daaras (Quranic schools where ta) rarely feature the necessary facilities needed to house children. Talibés here often live without running water and electricity in accommodations that often consist of ruins of abandoned buildings rather than proper homes. Holes in the walls are common, roofs are often missing (a real problem during the rainy season), and children tend to sleep on old mattresses on the sand with limited clothes, food, and essential goods. Forced to beg for several hours every day, talibés grow up away from their parents, in extremely poor conditions, where physical punishments are still unfortunately common. When studying in the daaras, they exclusively focus on the Quran, giving them very limited job prospects. As a consequence, once they grow up, talibés can either work easy manual jobs for which they are often poorly remunerated or open their own Quranic school, perpetuating this unfortunate cycle. The Maison Des Talibés is now trying to change this by improving the conditions in daaras, teaching talibés useful subjects such as English, and raising awareness.