Ghetto Kids: Therein lies the solution to the problem of street children [EDITOR'S OPINION]

People seemed to be amused by the young children (aged between 5 and 14) who pulled off witty and entertaining dance moves in the song’s video.

The story behind these children was unknown to the world, though. Most were either orphaned at an early age or had been abandoned by their parents.

Left to the world, the children fell into the arms of Kavuma Dauda, a former street child himself, who transformed their lives by giving them shelter and teaching them dance moves, among other skills.

Kavuma has over the years milked the new-found global stature of the Ghetto Kids to improve the lives of the children, mostly through showcasing their dancing skills on global platforms such as Britain’s Got Talent.

The Ghetto Kids are not the only group in Uganda helping orphaned and abandoned children.

Music, Life Skills, and Destitution Alleviation (M-Lisada) is a non-governmental organisation that has taken on the mantle of skilling street children, of whom most are either orphaned at an early age or abandoned by their parents.

The organisation, which was founded 27 years ago, has habilitated and empowered street children with life skills, which include dancing and music, among others.

Without initiatives such as these ones, these children would be on the streets of Kampala or any other urban centre, trying to earn a living by begging from well-wishers.

Uganda, according to a 2021 enumeration conducted by Retrak Uganda in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, has a total of 2,600 children aged between 7 and 17 years living on the streets, of whom an estimated 1410 are actively working on the streets.

The numbers could be higher given that it has now been two years since this survey was conducted.

Part of the solution to the street children's challenge could be habilitating and skilling them with different skills so they can live a decent life.

In one of the television interviews, Kuvama said the current group of ghetto kids is different from the ones he started with.

Asked what had happened to the first cohort, he said most had been adopted by well-wishers in the US, while others were in school.

Kavuma said the children’s lives had since been transformed for the better thanks to his skills-imparting initiative under the Ghetto Kids umbrella.

Most of these have been individual initiatives, yet Uganda still faces a huge challenge with street children, as thousands of them still loiter on the streets of Kampala and other urban centres in the country.

The government would have to consider habilitating and skilling these children if this problem is to be dealt with.