Street Children in Uganda are the growing population. 15,000 children live on the streets of Kampala. Uganda has one of the largest populations of young people in the world with over 56 percent of its 37 million people under the age of 18, and more than 52 percent under age 15. Children are also the single largest demographic group living in poverty in Uganda. Street children are a security threat, and therefore, need to help them become useful citizens.
In Uganda, approximately 38% of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day, with such little income, families have a hard time providing basic needs for all their children.
Children whose families cannot provide for them will spend their days and sometime nights on the streets. While on the streets, they involve in different activities.
- Search for food in the garbage.
- Begging Searching for pieces of scrap metal that can be sold.
- Finding small tasks to do in exchange for food or money. Like carrying luggage for people at the bus depot, sorting beans in a market stall, sweeping and doing laundry.
- Child labor.
YWAM Kampala is trying to reintegrate street children into families with a vision that they will become productive and self-reliant citizens.
Our staff walk the streets each day to meet the street children where they are and invite them to join us at our project center. If the children choose to come then we provided with food, counselling, medical care, clothes, and access to education. If they cannot re-connect to their families, we will keep them in our rehabilitation center.
The children spend one year in our rehabilitation will be transfer to community schools. After children complete primary and secondary school, we stop supporting them and then they find themselves for their living or further studies.