Public Story
THE STREET CHILDREN OF KAMPALA
In 2019, Kampala was estimated to have a population of about 1,650,800 people.
Kampala is reported to be among the fastest growing cities in Africa with an annual population growth rate of 4.03 percent.
The widely growing commercial city has therefore attracted all sorts of people with different backgrounds to flow and dock into the city not leaving out the curious young minds who leave their homes for various reasons.
Kampala being a big city with very many people, human rights and gender based violence are often ignored and looked at as slight issues.
Uganda experiences almost 10,000 gender based violence cases per year which forces so many people to move in a bid to find better lives.
This movement of people affected by violence has however not returned favour to most of the people that carry it out.
At a very tender age of at least 7 years, a few children in Kampala have been forced to move out of their ordinary lives into unexpected horrors that often claim their lives in silence.
Some of the children however move to the city in search for hard cash to support their families.
Kampala alone is estimated to have a striking number of between 15000 to 20000 children living on the streets as reported by the government of Uganda.
With these children living on the streets, they are left without proper medication, feeding and even shelter which tortures most of them resulting into theft and other wild behaviours.
The children at a very young age are also exposed to hardcore drugs like marijuana, heroin commonly known as nyost. These drugs further drain the children's lives and leave them almost helpless as they struggle with constant addictions at very tender ages.
Many of these children can be found in Kisenyi, Katanga, Kivuulu, Katwe and many other places around the city.
This project aims to show the exact lives of the children after their long street days.
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