Supporting street youth to be resilient
The lived realities for children and young people in many African cities are of rising inequality and poverty, with the number and proportion of young people in African countries increasing. Street youth remain hidden in policy debates as they transition into adulthood in situations of vulnerability, and chronic and acute stress.
Policy approaches often fail to address their precarity or can exacerbate it. Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities (2REST) is a two-year project working with policymakers, NGOs, academics, resilience experts, street youth, and early career researchers in eight countries to deliver an evidence base on the lived realities of street youth and the multisystemic resilience support required from policy and practice.
2REST analysed secondary data from the project Growing up on the Streets using a multisystemic resilience framework. This framework of risks and resources goes beyond individual resilience to show how multiple systems can be involved in helping young people in their daily lives.
Growing up on the Streets was a participatory longitudinal research project conducted with 229 street youth in Accra, Ghana, Bukavu, DRC, and Harare, Zimbabwe between 2012 and 2020. The quotes and data in the policy brief are from street youth research assistants in the three cities who observed their peers and reported what life was like on the streets.
The 2REST team has produced policy briefs on:
- Resilient violence reduction systems for street youth
- Resilient livelihood systems for street youth
- Resilient health systems for street youth
- Resilient systems supporting street youth to meet their basic needs
2REST has an international advisory board comprised of 26 practitioner, policy and academic members, in collaboration with and chaired by the Consortium for Street Children.
The academic partners are from the Children's Institute (University of Cape Town), the University of Dundee, Makerere University, and University of Pretoria.