World AIDS Day...

World AIDS Day – the disease has an impact on street children and former-street children too...1 December 2008   

“I sometimes think that maybe if I had parents that loved and cared for me I wouldn’t have this disease. I’m the kind of person that likes to listen to people who can give me advice but I never had that when I was growing up. I sometimes blame myself for my situation”. (A former street child, 20. Durban, South Africa).

As the world marks World AIDS Day, street children, sometimes described, as the ‘orphan part of the AIDS orphan crisis’ remain the forgotten victims of the pandemic. HIV/AIDS has added to the complexity of the issue of street children in Sub-Saharan Africa. With a projected figure of 4.2 million AIDS orphans by 2010 in Africa (UNICEF) the number of children living on the streets is considered by many as likely to increase; this is in spite of family networks that absorb thousands of children without parents, despite the added pressures this places on their resources.

Like so many statistics on street children, the exact number living on the streets that are HIV positive is unknown. HIV/AIDS remains a serious issue for our partners working with street children in Burundi and South Africa. It is estimated that on the streets of Bujumbura, Burundi that at least 30% of children are HIV positive. Street Action’s partner New Generation says that these figures are increasing. In Durban, South Africa the numbers are much higher with an estimated 90% of girls living on the streets now HIV positive.

What are Street Action’s partners doing?

Our focus this year is on our partner Umthombo Street Children in Durban, South Africa. HIV/AIDS is affecting more and more street children and there are an increasing number of girls on the streets who are pregnant. It was recognised that this particular group needed to be educated about how to protect themselves from the virus, but also how to take care of a person who already was suffering with it. This program has been called YAP (Young and Positive) and through poetry, music, dance and visual arts it aims to educate the girls about the disease.

Umthombo decided that to make the HIV/AIDS more fun for the children and to enhance their engagement in the issue, they needed to be more hands on and allow the children to communicate their own thoughts, knowledge and ideas about the virus. Through taking the art workshops to the streets, the children drew and painted what they thought the HIV virus looked like. This enabled the Umthombo team to begin talking to the children about the issues associated with the disease and the children to talk about their own experiences. Click here to download some of the images the children created.

Street children remain the forgotten victims of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Street Action remembers all the street children living with HIV and the many who have died on the streets from the disease.

If you would like to support the work of our partners in the fight against HIV/AIDS amongst street children in Burundi and South Africa you can donate by going to our Funding page on our web site.