Knowledge exchange and impact: Growing up on the Streets
Content related to the story maps
- Learning on Harare’s streets under COVID-19 lockdown: making a story map with street youth - read about making the story map (open access)
- Pasha 88: Lockdown and young people living on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe (Conversation Africa podcast).
- Young people living on Harare’s streets provide glimpses into life under COVID-19 lockdown The Conversation September 9, 2020.
- Blog: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships Blog: In the Shadow of a Pandemic: Harare's Street Youth Experience COVID-19 (3 August 2020).
Ongoing impacts at the United Nations (UN)
2025
- Professor Lorraine van Blerk, Speaker and Panel member at the official side event to the 80th United Nations General Assembly entitled "A Child-Centred Response to the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Street Situations" at the special invitation of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Sale, Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children, Ms. Mama Fatima Singhateh.
- Growing up on the Streets submission “helped to shape” the thematic report which the UN Special Rapporteur presented to the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on 13 October 2025.
2024
- Professor Lorraine van Blerk and Louise Meincke presented critical findings from Growing up on the Streets, longitudinal participatory research with hundreds of children and youth in street situations in Africa, evidencing the scale of violence experienced by street children and youth. See the UN’s publication: Growing up on the streets and realising children’s rights: Promising practices addressing violence against all children.
2023
- Professor Lorraine van Blerk contributed to Homelessness as a cause and consequence of contemporary forms of slavery – Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, Tomoya Obokata.
Consultation for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on Children in Street Situations
- UN Consultation: 200 Growing up on the Streets participants in Harare, Zimbabwe; Accra, Ghana; Bukavu, DRC took part in focus groups on human rights, forming the Africa Consultation for the United Nations General Comment 21, on the Rights of Children in Street Situations (UNGC21)
- Africa Consultation Report for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on Children in Street Situations February – March 2016
- Award-winning Training Pack: Growing up on the Streets Knowledge Exchange Training Pack (Jan 2016). The Training Pack is now part of Consortium for Street Children’s Resource Pack for Participatory Advocacy (2025)
- 2015 Briefing Paper 6: The Voices of Street Children and Youth: Knowledge Exchange in Three African Cities
- Submission to UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights ahead of country visit to Ghana
Award: The 2015 Market Research Society’s President’s Medal in recognition of its extraordinary contribution to impact.
UN Presentation: Project founder, the late Father Patrick Shanahan, presents to the United Nations Geneva – Rights of the Child
Briefing papers
2022
2018
- Building Assets on the Streets (Briefing Paper 14)
- Friendship on the Streets (Briefing Paper 13)
- The Rights of Street Children and Youth (Briefing Paper 12)
2017
2016
- Spirituality on the Streets (Briefing Paper 9)
- Health and Wellbeing of Street Children and Youth (Briefing Paper 8)
- Safe Movement in the City (Briefing Paper 7)
2015
- The Voices of Street Children and Youth: Knowledge Exchange in Three African Cities (Briefing Paper 6)
- Work and Earnings of Street Children and Youth (Briefing Paper 5)
- Accessing Food on the Street (Briefing Paper 4)