Survival strategies of street children in Kilimanjaro region: a case study of Moshi urban
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Date
2014
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Publisher
University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
This study investigated the main survival strategies of street children in Moshi Municipal. Specifically it explores the socio economic determinants of street children and different survival strategies that children use on the street in order to sustain their lives. However, it explored the impact of street life to children’s behavior and their future life. Street life is difficult to children than what they expected it to be, since they have to take care of themselves with no parental guidance. Due to that, they have to find everything for themselves, thus they have to adopt different survival strategies according to what the environment could provide. However the implications of such life to children have more negative than positive impact. Yet, few studies have been done in Moshi to show such strategies and implication to children’s’ behavior and lives in general. The study was more or less exploratory and descriptive and used both qualitative and quantitative data. The Questionnaire, interviews and observations were the main approaches used for data collection. The respondents included boys and girls who were randomly selected from fifteen wards and data were collected from children within and outside the centres, as well as social workers within the centres. The data entry, organizing and analysis was done using SPSS version 17. The findings were that children in Moshi migrated to the streets due to household poverty, dysfunctional families, separation, alcoholism, and moral decay which results in home to streets and rural to urban migration. There is high number of boys on the streets than girls, 98.3% to 1.7%. However, the majority have either one or both parents who could care for them. To meet all their basic needs while in the streets they have to work or adopt several strategies in order to earn some money which could help them survive. Survival strategies adopted by children include begging, robbing people, working as beggars, doing other casual labour such as washing cars, collecting and selling scrappers, cleaning corridors in the morning which will help them to earn some money to buy food and other necessities. On the other hand, despite being able to adopt and develop different strategies to earn a living, they also face a lot of problems such as physical abuse such as physical tougher and rape, suffering from diseases, lack of security, and rights to access social, education and developmental strategies. They are also forced in to substance abuse to fit in to the groups and they later are subjected to lack of focus or hopes and prosperity for the future. Thus, street children care is not a government responsibility; rather, it is everyone’s responsibility within the community. If care and love is available within the household, children can withstand economic hardships. Conclusively, basing on the results, existence and persistence of socio-economic factors will lead to the production of more street children. Unless more effort is directed to reduce and eliminate such factors, the communities, urban dwellers and nations in general, should forget about eliminating the plight of street children. The study made some recommendations towards mitigating the negative impacts of different factors that led to the result of street children and the ways in which the community and the government can help to solve the problem.
Description
Available in print form, East Africana Collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library, Class mark (THS EAF HV887.T34M67)
Keywords
Street children, Abondened children, Moshi urban, Kilimanjaro region
Citation
Moshi, I.R. (2014) Survival strategies of street children in Kilimanjaro region: a case study of Moshi urban, Master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam