1. 1
Market Research Society – Members Evening
21 April 2016
Wayne Shand
Research Director, Growing up on the Streets
2. Growing up on the Streets – Basics …
• Qualitative and longitudinal research project working
with 198 young people in three African cities – Accra,
Harare and Bukavu.
• Participants are aged between 14 and 20 years and
live / work on streets and informal settlements of
their cities.
• Understanding lives, experiences and the impact of
urban poverty on growing up in cities.
• Inform and shape national and international policy
targeting street children and youth.
3. Research Methods – Challenges
• Gaining access to a closed and suspicious population.
• Maintaining engagement of young people –
perceived as being highly mobile.
• Getting ‘honest’ answers – how would be know the
data was accurate.
• Managing risk – to participants and research staff.
• Trust – how to ensure confidentiality between young
people and researchers and among participants.
• Meaningful – for researchers AND participants.
4. Research Methods – Approach
• Embed the research in each city:
– with NGO partners; and
– with young people as Research Assistants.
• Track change over time:
– understand how growing up affects young people and
their choices living in the city.
• Research frame that reflects the complexity of life:
– capability approach takes account of positive and negative
aspects of life.
5. Young People as Research Assistants
• Overcome practical challenges of access and local
knowledge.
• Street youth have good ethnographic research skills –
observing, listening, reflecting, storytelling etc.
• Developed a training programme for street youth –
enhanced existing skills to work on the research.
6. Young People as Research Assistants
• Overcome practical challenges of access and local
knowledge.
• Street youth have good ethnographic research skills –
observing, listening, reflecting, storytelling etc.
• Developed a training programme for street youth –
enhanced existing skills to work on the research.
• In each city 6 Research Assistants worked within
their local area and with other young people in their
social networks to collect data.
8. Data Collection
• Data has been collected through:
– weekly interviews involving the Research Assistant and the
local Project Manager; and
– quarterly focus groups involving all participants in the
networks (66 in each city) for each capability theme.
10. Data Collection
• Data has been collected through:
– weekly interviews involving the Research Assistant and the
local Project Manager; and
– quarterly focus groups involving all participants in the
networks (66 in each city) for each capability theme.
• Interviews and focus groups translated and
transcribed and sent to the University of Dundee for
coding and storage.
• Interview data supplemented by annual baseline
surveys, photographs and contextual information on
the city.
11. Researching Complex Lives
• Investigate the lived experience of growing up on the
streets to:
– challenge some of the blunt conceptualisations found in
policy; and
– promote and inform new approaches to service delivery.
• Worked with street children and youth to develop a
framework that could capture the positive and
negative aspects of life.
• Adapted the human development capability
approach.
12.
13. Findings
• Experience of urban poverty
• Access to shelter
• Finding food
• Earning money
• Issues of violence
• Relations with authorities
• Rights and legal protection
14. Findings - Experience of urban poverty
“I stroll around [places] looking for life, to find something
which can help me afford to buy a pair of shoes or clothes, so
that I can live like a human being” (Bukavu, October 2014).
15. Findings - Access to shelter
“The alleyway is good and not good, because sleeping in there
you sleep like a rabbit...you sleep while at the same time you
keep an ear out […] Because of soldiers you should sleep with
one eye open” (Harare, February 2013).
16. Findings - Finding food
“If you are not working, you will not have money […] if you
don’t have the money, you will not get food from anywhere”
(Accra, October 2012).
17. Findings - Earning money
“[…] as a girl there is no other way of making money except
prostituting” (Harare, October 2013).
18. Findings - Issues of violence
“[M]aybe you are walking and you meet some boys standing
there and they bring out knife from their pocket; your phone,
money and everything which you have in your possession you
will have to give it to them if not you will lose your life” (Accra,
July 2013).
19. Findings - Relations with authorities
“The police […] violently pull us out of the cars which we sleep
in at around midnight and start to beat us […] They took our
belts, phones and the money that we had in our pockets”
(Bukavu, June 2013).
20. Findings - Rights and legal protection
“When you go and report your case; once he knows that you
are from the street, your case becomes useless” (Harare, June
2013).
21. Early Impact
• Promoting discussion on the lives of street children:
– All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG);
– ESRC local meetings and London conference;
– Chatham House; and
– MRS President’s Award.
• Used for the UN General Comment on Children in
Street Situations.
• Young people have become strong advocates within
their communities.
22. Lessons
• Raising young voices – unique perspectives on issues
of urban poverty and the city.
• Participation – leadership and capability are there to
be released.
• Practical problems of working remotely with partner
organisations abroad.
• Difficulties of challenging deeply embedded views /
policies on the social place of children.
• Investment not intervention – normalising
understanding of urban poverty.
23. For further information on the research
Web: www.streetinvest.org/guots
Email: guots@streetinvest.org
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