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The COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate economic consequences on the urban poor, particularly on young people living on the streets. As the pandemic moves from acute to chronic phases, novel methodologies can be used to rapidly co-produce outputs and share learning opportunities with those living in urban poverty. A “story map” focusing on the effects of the pandemic and lockdown was co-produced by UK researchers with street children and youth and practitioners in Harare, Zimbabwe in June 2020. Story maps are web applications combining participant-generated visual media into online templates, with multimedia content supported by narrative accounts. This story map reveals young street participants’ experiences of lockdown, including the effects on their livelihoods, sources of food and support networks. Its purpose is to tell the “story” of street lives, and to provide an advocacy tool and learning resource for policymakers, academics and practitioners working with young homeless people.

Little is known about how street connected young people maintain livelihoods and how their earning strategies change as they enter adulthood. Living precariously in street environments, markets and informal settlements, street children and youth develop complex responses to their social and economic marginalisation, working on the fringes of the formal and informal urban economy. This chapter draws from research undertaken with street children and youth in three African cities to highlight the importance of the informal economy, reveal how income is generated to meet daily basic needs and the compromises and vulnerabilities these create for young people 'Growing up on the Streets'. W Shand, L van Blerk, J Hunter. Economic Practices of African Street Youth: Growing up on the Streets in Ghana, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo FINAL pre-publication VERSION (2 November 2015).

This paper explores the interaction between peer relationships and sexual health among street youth in three Sub-Saharan African cities: Accra (Ghana), Bukavu (Democratic Republic of Congo), and Harare (Zimbabwe). It begins by conceptualising peer relationships for youth globally and considers why these are pivotal for young people living in street settings. The paper reconceptualizes street peer relationships not as replacement families, but as sharing ‘social anchorage’ in the street space. It draws on qualitative ethnographic data from Growing up on the Streets, a longitudinal research project with a participatory methodology undertaken between 2012 and 2016 and engaging street youth (aged 14–20 at project outset) trained in ethnographic observations as research assistants ( n = 18), following a network of ten peers ( n = 229 by 2016), reporting their experiences in weekly interviews with facilitators. A wider network attended focus groups ( n = 399). The project engaged a ‘capability’ approach, with ten capabilities defined by street youth as key to their daily lives. Empirical evidence is from a subset of data qualitatively coded (using NVivo) against capabilities ‘Health and Wellbeing’ and ‘Friendship’, across all interviews, focus groups and cities ( n = 212 sources). In exploring this intersection, the paper demonstrates beneficial and adverse impacts of peer influence on sexual health, including misinformation about contraceptives and death from an informal sector abortion; highlighting findings from across the three cities around primacy of same-sex peer relations, mistrust between genders and in healthcare providers. The paper finds that while street youth remain subject to cultural norms around gender identities, street peer relationships hold a persuasive power; contributing to both everyday survival and moments of acute need. It concludes that recognising the right of young people to live and seek livelihoods in urban settings, and adopting the social networks they create to advance street youth's sexual health has become even more relevant in a (post)pandemic world.