Street Action - Committed to street children through action and partnership

On Tuesday 20th October more than 120 people gathered at number 11 Downing Street for an evening reception for Street Action hosted by Maggie and Alistair Darling, with the Foreign Secretary David Milliband dropping by.

Street Action operates with the conviction that when we build connections and relationships, it makes people’s lives better, not just street children themselves but also the network of people committed to supporting them.

The purpose of the reception was to celebrate the great work that is already happening with our partners, to share our plans to build our capability to support even more of their work in the future, to launch some important and innovative research, and to make more connections and relationships between Street Action supporters and the invited guests. The guests included people from our existing partners including Umthombo in Durban South Africa, the Amos Trust, other street child organisations; companies who already support us such as British Airways, trust funds, some other NGOs, some MPs and academics who take a particular interest in Africa and street children, and others who we hope will join our network of supporters.

Maggie Darling welcomed the guests and told us how she had become connected to Street Action though her daughter spending time with Umthombo in her gap year, where she met Joe Walker. Joe and Nick Turner introduced the work of Street Action and our strategies to move from best endeavours amongst friends and supporters to being an effective 21st century street child charity. We had a “virtual presentation” from Dieudonné Nahimana from New Generation our partner in Burundi, and presentations in person from Mandi and Tom Hewitt from Umthombo. Mandi gave us a vivid and moving insight into the life of a street child, drawing from her own experiences of life on the streets in Durban. Tom told us about the tremendous progress that Umthombo has made in providing services for children on the street and helping them to make new lives away from the street. The world cup taking place in South Africa in 2010 provides tremendous challenges and opportunities in raising awareness of street child issues and providing safe options for street children in partnership with the municipality.

The street children our partners focus on are living on the street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no adult supervision. To see a short video of some children talking about life on the streets click below.

“If a child cries (dies) in the street, does anybody hear?“

Nigel Rollins of the World Health Organisation (WHO) captivated the audience with a compelling presentation of the results of some ground-breaking research - the first project to document the health and psychosocial well-being of children living on the streets, (including understanding the impact HIV/AIDS), their access to health services, and to capture their experiences and aspirations. As Nigel said "As much as we can be moved stories and pictures and music put together well, there is also value in having statistics". This was a partnership project with Umthombo, Street Action and the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).

Joe rounded up the evening by inviting everyone to connect with us in whatever way they want - we will be keen to contact people in the next few weeks.

We hope you will join us on this journey - please click here.

To see a video summary of all the presentations click below.

To see a video summary of the presentations made on the night click here.