This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cairo with former homeless children and youth involved in a transnational NGO program. Drawing on the life histories of two young people from this program, I raise several key questions on the ethics and logics of NGO interventions that target the “homeless child” in Egypt as an object of humanitarian aid, such as compassionate care, education and uplift. I examine closely and seriously the complex intimate lives of children and youth using the life history interview method, and show how ethnographers can better understand the large-scale processes that produce and sustain poverty in Cairo by focusing on young populations. The research approaches young people as political subjects who simultaneously negotiate extreme conditions of structural and state violence and challenge the global, middle-class model of “the child” promoted by NGOs and international children’s rights advocates.