All around the globe there are children and young people for whom the street is their ‘home’ – where, within any 24-hour period, they will spend their time. It is almost impossible to pin one definition that will capture the many different situations that bring children to the street; from children without parents having to work, sleep, hustle on the street around the clock, over a long period of time, to those children who come to the street only during the day, or intermittently, to work, to beg, to escape abuse or difficulties at home. And there are also street-living children who do maintain close relationships with various family members despite being away from the home.

We also know that for many children moving on to the street was an active choice and should be respected as such. Children living on the streets form their own peer-group families: they protect each other and rely upon each other for support. They work for a living (whether begging, stealing or actively labouring) and many consider themselves to be successful. In order to work with street-children successfully this must be understood.

There are a multitude of reasons why children lead these ‘street connected’ lives, a multitude of factors that bring any one child to this environment.

What interests Streets Ahead Rwanda and our Partner, SACCA is the fact that children living in this way are at increased risk of being exploited and abused. Far from being victims, street connected children often make pragmatic choices and can be extremely resilient – but unfortunately they co-exist in a world where adults can and will take advantage of the fact they are ‘children’.

International and national NGOs across the globe, and particularly in Africa, have had decades of different interventions to support street connected children. Many of these interventions have been based on the three ‘R’s’ rescue, rehabilitation or reintegration. We know that children are individuals and there isn’t a one size fits all approach. Many of the best intentions of NGOs have been at odds with national governments, who often have a far more rigid and oppressive response to children who they consider ‘out of place’ on the streets.

We have to remember too, that many of the countries where we find children linked to the street for shelter, income, peers, are those countries without the safety nets we associate with protecting children and young people. Many national governments feel they have to ‘sweep up’ these children and reform them, return them to their families or place them in institutions. These reactive responses do little to unpick the problem of why the child came to the street in the first place.

We know that poverty, conflict, illness and the fragile subsistence of so many millions of families across Africa make them vulnerable to the slightest ‘shock’. A poor harvest can devastate a family, not just leaving them hungry, but denying them of produce that can be sold. A family bereavement can create devastating impact on young children, often moved to other extended family members, where relationships can break down and children run away.

Life is certainly not easy for children living and working on the streets of Rwanda. They have to contend with abuse, uncertain access to food, medical care and education; there are frequent run-ins with the police, community structures and other street-child gangs or families; the rains, malaria, the threat of HIV/AIDS and the disdain of community members and the stigma of the ‘street child’ label or ‘maibobo’ as they are derogatorily known in Rwanda.

Rwandan Government policy is to remove children from the streets if they have no family home or are engaged in criminal activity (which extends to begging and unlicensed hawking). Children are placed in either Government or local NGO rehabilitation centres. Government policy is that children should not stay long term in institutional care, but be placed with families – either their own extended family or foster families. This regime has developed relatively recently, and all NGOs working with street children in Rwanda must operate within it.