Former street children find new lease of life

His mother, who has never returned, the now 20-year-old recalls, left for them Shs20,000, two kilogrammes of sugar, five kilogrammes of posho, a basin of charcoal, before heading to the lake where she was buying fish which she used to sell to make her family ends meet.

“My brother informed me that our mother would return in five days but based on the shopping, I sensed something fishy. Just like my suspicion five days, became weeks, months and now years. That is how my life started getting messy until I was rescued and given hope again,” says Ssemakula.

Ssemakula is among the more than 500 former street children who exhibited their art, talents and crafts at the Unseen Me Exhibition by Streetlights Uganda, a youth-founded non-government organisation in Namuwongo.

Shortly after their mother left, Ssemakula who was in Primary Three started a different lifestyle.

“Our landlord evicted us after three years and my uncle in Mpigi took me in and subjected me to casual labour,” he says. adding:“One year later, I trekked from Mpigi to Kampala and became a street kid. We started collecting scrap and later ventured into selling plastic bottles.” 

The artiste says while collecting bottles in Bwaise in 2021, a young woman approached him proposing to teach him skills that would make him better. That is how he joined the Streetlights  Uganda training programme. Today, he makes shoes and is a singer.

Ssemakula is not alone, other children too share their horrific stories on the streets which ended up making their future uncertain.

“I lost hope, I did not know that one day I would stand in front of such a gathering to testify. Thank you Lord for bringing Streetlights Uganda into my life,” says a former househelp.

These former street children are exhibiting their talents, craft and creations at the  two-week Unseen Me Exhibition which  took place between June 28 and July 11 at Circular Design Hub in Industrial Area, Kampala.

Victoria Merab Akinyi, the founder of Streetlights Uganda who organised the exhibition, says it is aimed at serving as a network and a safe space  for  street-connected and vulnerable children from underprivileged communities around Kampala and beyond.

These, Akinyi says, come together to showcase their talents to the general public and different child rights practitioners through art, music, and fashion to bridge a gap between street-connected children and the general public and voice out the challenges they face.

She notes that they want to help street children off  the streets.

This is the exhibition’s fourth edition; the previous ones were held in 2017, 2018, and 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic affected them.

“We make these street children busy by skilling them instead of letting them roam  on streets collecting bottles where they are subjected to all forms of dangers, especially girls,” says Akinyi.

“We desire to offer these children a better life and equip them with the entrepreneurship and life skills that I obtained earlier on in my life.  We encourage them to become self-employed and responsible citizens,” she says.

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“Streetlights Uganda was born out of empathy and a deeper understanding of what it is like to lack in everything and hence offers an escape from the dangers of social ruin to the comfort of social support and belief in the fact that every child has an innate talent that can be discovered, nurtured and developed for them to earn a living,” Victoria M Akinyi, founder of Streelights Uganda.