Street Children in Kenya - Voices of Children in Search of a Childhood

As kinship relationships and support networks across family lines weaken with modernization, economic stressors take a great toll on children. Kenya, like some other nations in Africa and around the globe, has witnessed a rapid rise in street children. The street children in Nairobi come from single parent families which are mostly headed by women. Another group are AIDS orphans. This study documents how street children in Nairobi follow survival strategies including (for boys) collecting garbage, and (for girls), prostitution. Gender is emphasized throughout the book.

Although impoverished families are the most likely to produce street children, not all poor families have their children on the streets. The problem of street children is a complex one that calls for a comprehensive and coordinated policy and program for intervention at all levels and in all sectors of society. Alleviating poverty and rebuilding the family institution should be among the first steps in addressing the problem.

List of contents

Introduction
Methodology: Perspectives and Multiple Techniques
Cultural Contexts: For Street Children: Family and Childhood
Nairobi: A City of Contrasts
Kenyan Voices: Focus Group and Survey Responses
Work Patterns, Occupational Spaces, and Survival Strategies
Community Life and Social Organization of Street Children
Personal Profiles
Suffering on the Streets
Applied: Multiple Strategies, Cultural Solutions, and the Way Forward

About the author

PHILIP L. KILBRIDE is Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College, where he has taught for 25 years. He has coauthored Changing Family Life in East Africa (1990) and Encounters with American Ethnic Culture (1990).

Product details

• Authors: Philip L. Kilbride, Kilbride Philip L., Enos Njeru, Njeru Enos, Collette Suda, Suda Collette A.
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 17
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.03.2000
• EAN: 9780897895293
• ISBN: 978-0-89789-529-3
• No. of pages: 184
• Weight: 397 g
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Services, Kenya, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Poverty & unemployment, Regional Studies, Social and cultural anthropology, Regional / International studies, Child welfare, Child welfare and youth services, Housing & homelessness, Poverty and precarity, Housing and homelessness, Geography and World Cultures: Culture