What drives a child from their home to roam the streets, to beg, scavenge and scrounge in the rubbish bins for discarded bits and pieces of food and risk sleeping in street alleys with nothing but plastic sheets to keep warm during cold nights? Even for adults, spending a night in the open, at a railway station or a bus terminus is a prospect one never looks forward to, especially during the cold winter season. According to research done by a local non-governmental organisation, Future's International, more than 12 000 children are now living on Zimbabwe's streets.