Achievement Orientations and Strategies

Abstract

Cultures of achievement among street children (n = 60), former street children (n = 63), and school-going children (n = 60), all of whom share the Kilimanjaro culture of Tanzania, are compared. The Thematic Apperception Test, a projective test known to evoke achievement concerns and originally designed for clinical psycho-diagnoses, was used to generate narratives for thematic analyses. The approach is child centered, allowing children to be imaginative under low-stress conditions. Analysis showed that each subculture had a unique achievement orientation and strategy. Among street children, emerging themes of heroic achievement orientation were tempered with paralytic strategies through which goals could not be realized. Former street children's emergent themes emphasized the presence of beneficial friendships and thus supportive achievement orientation, while strategy themes included exercising choices. School-going children showed deserved achievement orientation in which hard work leads to rewards and control strategy leads to both successful and detrimental outcomes. Themes demonstrate the relative ways in which children adapt to the "difficult life" that has become a common characterization of life in Kilimanjaro.

Factors Affecting the Effectiveness ofStreet Families’ Rehabilitation Programs in Nairobi City County Kenya

“…Accurate statistics on street families are said to be difficult to find due to the hidden nature of such families, on its' part, UNICEF, (2009) held that the number of street children stood at 100 million globally and this figure keeps increasing regularly. Majority of these children are said to be boys aged 10-14 years with younger children joining the streets with countries with the most numbers of street families being India and Latin America globally (Nalkur, 2009). To remedy the problem of street families, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have initiated programs and or projects geared towards rehabilitation of street children/families through actions such as funding of street families' rehabilitation programs and reintegration of street children and families (Mark, 2013).…”

The Vulnerability and Resilience of Street Children

“…The transitional period from vulnerability to resilience and how it happens is not an area well explored in the literature (Aptekar, 1989;Sondhi-Garg, 2004;Nalkur, 2009), although descriptions of resilience are now more or less commonplace. Evans reports that during drawing activities with street children in South Africa, pictures depicting the positive images of street life were produced (2002, p. 59).…”