Public Attitude Towards Street Children and How Street Children Understand Themselves: The Case of Nekemte Town

Abstract

Street children are common phenomena throughout the world facing a lot of challenges in their life. People especially local community have controversial attitude for this children while the majority perceive them as the trouble and burden to the societies life few of the community have positive attitude.The main objective of this study was identifying the attitude people for street children and the attitude street children for themselves.So, to attain this objective, a cross-sectional study design was utilized. The researchers used mixed approach and both quantitative and qualitative tools of data collection were used. The researcher relied more on qualitative method due to the nature of the issue under investigation. The data was collected from 100 street children and other 10 concerned living in Nekemte Town.The researcher observe the town first and communicate with different people to identify the areas where street children highly concentrated and based  on that three areas namely Bus station, around Miriam Church and 2^nd Street of Nekemte town were selected. In order to collect the data three types of instruments were used which includes questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion.Hence, the results of the findings go in line with the objectives of this study.Almost all of the children participated in this study argued as as the local people have negative attitude for them although their attitude contradict with the realities street children life. Different people interviewed also justified as people ignore street children standing form their behavior and street children’s engagement in delinquent activities. They also depicted as street children have positive side especially their ups and down activities to overcome their and their families’ problem.

Keywords:Public attitude, Street Children, Street children attitude