'Growing up on the streets' was a qualitative, longitudinal, participatory research project following the lives of street children and youth as they grow up on the streets of three African cities: Accra, Ghana; Bukavu, DRC and Harare, Zimbabwe. Street children and youth were participants and researchers alongside street work practitioners, UK academics, a UK charity and African NGOs. Funding came from Backstage Trust. The innovative research design was developed with street children and youth (aged 14-20), employing a capability (rather than vulnerability) approach to their lives. They defined the 10 capabilities which formed the framework for the project. The project won awards for its innovative approach and impact. The data (2478 interviews) provides unique insights into the patterns of young people’s daily lives on the street as they seek to create adult lives to value.

The research refined and applied to street life Amartya Sen’s (1999) and Martha Nassbaum’s (2000) capability approach and framework; rather than focus on the vulnerabilities of young people on the streets we must explore their capabilities to learn more about their lives and how to support them. Ten capability statements were developed through pilot research with street children and youth in Accra (see Briefing Paper 1 and Shand, 2014), developed into statements accompanied by visual images for street children and youth to refer. The capabilities are issues that the young people raised as pertinent to their ability to have flourishing lives on the streets and form the framework for collecting data on young people’s lives. The collection of primary data followed a participatory street researcher philosophy whereby the research team work with street workers and street youth in each country to undertake their own ethnographic research (see Blazek, 2011; van Blerk 2013). Six research assistants, living on the streets, were selected in each country. The process of selection was participatory beginning with open information sessions on the research followed by a period of intense training. Some chose not to continue while others were unable to fully complete the training due to on-going commitments. A second further ethnographic training workshop then took place with the remaining young people in each country prior to finally being involved in the project. The ethnographic research training workshops equipped the young people with research skills based on the core principles of observation, questioning and listening. Due to relatively low levels of formal education among street children and youth in each of the three cities (Harare, Bukavu and Accra), a verbal approach was adopted to capture the views and experiences of participants. The researchers engaged in weekly informal interviews with a project manager, who was also trained in ethnographic questioning and listening skills. Through these interviews a street ethnography is captured which focuses on capabilities and follows a network of ten young people per researcher. This process was triangulated with focus groups which facilitate the inclusion of the voices of a larger number of street children and youth. In addition, a baseline survey of all young people taking part in the project was conducted over four years, enabling longitudinal data to be systematically collected and triangulated against the ethnographic interviews. 66 young people in each of the three cities were recruited to participate in the project (198 in total) but this number expanded across the participation types to be well over 500 over the three year period.