x xf xf xf xfxf x - St Clements University

2.7.3 Specific sectors that lead to the growth of street children plight
Studies and reports focusing on the street children phenomenon in countries in Latin
America, Asia and Africa, tend to draw attention to a number of factors seen to be behind
the appearance and growth of the phenomenon.
Generally, these factors are mainly socio –economic in nature; they include such issues
as:
1. The children living on the streets do not face difficulty to adapt to street life.
2. Children living on the streets are not likely to be failures in society.
3. Peer group influence has no effect on children living on the streets.
4. That single parenthood has no effect on children living on the street.
5. That children living on the streets are not likely to be violent.
The researcher will examine these factors looking at the effect if any this may have in the
phenomenon of street children in Sierra Leone.
2.7.3.1 Children who live on the street do not have difficulty to adapt to life on the street.
The mere fact that children have always like to be on the street is an indicator that life in
the street might not be too difficult for them. The street kids live in a condition of
extreme poverty. They are between five and fifteen years of age; the ones younger than
five are usually a burden to the rest of the gang and the ones who are 15 years and over
become too old to wander the streets without exposing themselves dangerously. The
street kids have not had the opportunity of going to school for one reason or the other.
Either they where never sent to school or there is no school within their communities.
The child profane pilgrim of the metropolis will have to be trained by his own means
without any essential schooling or family, which have we have seen has not even been
protective. The socialization will be a result of direct learning from life in the streets, the
only way possible in the absence of the home. We know the steps of this learning:
violence, hunger, diseases, small robberies on the sidewalks, the selling of one self to
47