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Market Research Society – Members Evening 21 April 2016

Wayne Shand Research Director, Growing up on the Streets

Growing up on the Streets – Basics …

• Qualitative and longitudinal research project working with 198 young people in three African cities – Accra, Harare and Bukavu.

• Participants are aged between 14 and 20 years and live / work on streets and informal settlements of their cities.

• Understanding lives, experiences and the impact of urban poverty on growing up in cities.

• Inform and shape national and international policy targeting street children and youth.

Research Methods – Challenges

• Gaining access to a closed and suspicious population.

• Maintaining engagement of young people –perceived as being highly mobile.

• Getting ‘honest’ answers – how would be know the data was accurate.

• Managing risk – to participants and research staff.

• Trust – how to ensure confidentiality between young people and researchers and among participants.

• Meaningful – for researchers AND participants.

Research Methods – Approach

• Embed the research in each city:

– with NGO partners; and

– with young people as Research Assistants.

• Track change over time:

– understand how growing up affects young people and their choices living in the city.

• Research frame that reflects the complexity of life:

– capability approach takes account of positive and negative aspects of life.

Young People as Research Assistants

• Overcome practical challenges of access and local knowledge.

• Street youth have good ethnographic research skills –observing, listening, reflecting, storytelling etc.

• Developed a training programme for street youth –enhanced existing skills to work on the research.

Young People as Research Assistants

• Overcome practical challenges of access and local knowledge.

• Street youth have good ethnographic research skills –observing, listening, reflecting, storytelling etc.

• Developed a training programme for street youth –enhanced existing skills to work on the research.

• In each city 6 Research Assistants worked within their local area and with other young people in their social networks to collect data.

Konkomba

Circle

Abuja

Advisory Group

Local Project Manager

Research Assistants

Service Providers

UK Team

Data Collection

• Data has been collected through:

– weekly interviews involving the Research Assistant and the local Project Manager; and

– quarterly focus groups involving all participants in the networks (66 in each city) for each capability theme.

Research Process

Data Collection

• Data has been collected through:

– weekly interviews involving the Research Assistant and the local Project Manager; and

– quarterly focus groups involving all participants in the networks (66 in each city) for each capability theme.

• Interviews and focus groups translated and transcribed and sent to the University of Dundee for coding and storage.

• Interview data supplemented by annual baseline surveys, photographs and contextual information on the city.

Researching Complex Lives

• Investigate the lived experience of growing up on the streets to:

– challenge some of the blunt conceptualisations found in policy; and

– promote and inform new approaches to service delivery.

• Worked with street children and youth to develop a framework that could capture the positive and negative aspects of life.

• Adapted the human development capability approach.

Findings

• Experience of urban poverty

• Access to shelter

• Finding food

• Earning money

• Issues of violence

• Relations with authorities

• Rights and legal protection

Findings - Experience of urban poverty

“I stroll around [places] looking for life, to find something which can help me afford to buy a pair of shoes or clothes, so

that I can live like a human being” (Bukavu, October 2014).

Findings - Access to shelter

“The alleyway is good and not good, because sleeping in there you sleep like a rabbit...you sleep while at the same time you keep an ear out […] Because of soldiers you should sleep with

one eye open” (Harare, February 2013).

Findings - Finding food

“If you are not working, you will not have money […] if you don’t have the money, you will not get food from anywhere”

(Accra, October 2012).

Findings - Earning money

“[…] as a girl there is no other way of making money except prostituting” (Harare, October 2013).

Findings - Issues of violence

“[M]aybe you are walking and you meet some boys standing there and they bring out knife from their pocket; your phone, money and everything which you have in your possession you will have to give it to them if not you will lose your life” (Accra,

July 2013).

Findings - Relations with authorities

“The police […] violently pull us out of the cars which we sleep in at around midnight and start to beat us […] They took our

belts, phones and the money that we had in our pockets” (Bukavu, June 2013).

Findings - Rights and legal protection

“When you go and report your case; once he knows that you are from the street, your case becomes useless” (Harare, June

2013).

Early Impact

• Promoting discussion on the lives of street children:

– All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG);

– ESRC local meetings and London conference;

– Chatham House; and

– MRS President’s Award.

• Used for the UN General Comment on Children in Street Situations.

• Young people have become strong advocates within their communities.

Lessons

• Raising young voices – unique perspectives on issues of urban poverty and the city.

• Participation – leadership and capability are there to be released.

• Practical problems of working remotely with partner organisations abroad.

• Difficulties of challenging deeply embedded views / policies on the social place of children.

• Investment not intervention – normalising understanding of urban poverty.

For further information on the research

Web: www.streetinvest.org/guots

Email: guots@streetinvest.org

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