By MARGARETTA wa GACHERU

Street childrens and their creative potential have been receiving increased attention in recent times.
Spurred on by the Government's concern to rehabilitate street children on a massive scale, new groups like Kuruka Maisha and Artists without Borders are carrying on the work began some time back by groups like Shangilia Mtoto wa Afrika and Streetwise, to transform the lives of destitute children through the arts.
In fact, long before the German Technical Agency came up with figures like 60,000 street children in Nairobi and 200,000 countrywide, Korogocho street children had stopped scavenging in the City Dump long enough to learn how to paint monumental wall murals at St. John's Catholic Church – with Chinese American artist Lily Yeh.
But in the past fortnight alone, several new arts projects for street children have started up, revealing themselves everywhere from Kenyatta National Hospital and Bomas Rescue Centre (in Korogocho) to Rahimtullah Museum of Modern Art, at Rahimtullah House, and Paa ya Paa Gallery at Ridgeways.
The children involved have come all the way from Kariobangi, Kayole, and Kawangware as well as from Soweto, Dandora, and of course, the City Centre.
And from what was seen last Saturday at both Ramoma and Paa ya Paa, children are already being trained in everything from acrobatics and art appreciation to painting and percussion – from lively drama to traditional dance.
The occasion at both venues was the official launching of new creative art programmes for street children – one happening at KNH involving 22 local artists working regularly with poor young patients in the overcrowded children's wards; the other under way just next to Nairobi's largest dumping ground at the Bomas Rescue Centre, where children are learning "The Transformative Power of Art in Building People and Community," as the Artists without Borders (AWB) project is called.
At Paa ya Paa, it was Nairobi Catholic Archbishop Ndingi Mwana 'a Nzeki who formally launched the Korogocho children's art project with a prayer. It embraced more than 200 children from Bomas Rescue, almost half of whom have already been to Nairobi Game Park as part of the AWB design to empower children through art and wildlife awareness.
The Philadephia-based project – conceived by Lily Yeh – started way back in 1994 when she first began collaborating with Paa ya Paa and the Catholic mission, based literally at the City Dump, to beautify to area with assistance from the children.
A specialist in transforming slums into showcases of beauty – with support from the local community with whom she shares basic arts skills – Yeh began in North Philadelphia, US, to create gardens out of gutters and colourful shrines out of abandoned shacks.
As in Philadelphia, the former fine art professor is not only teaching children to draw, sculpt, and even fly kites; she is also showing them how to transform their dreary domain into a place of beauty: their sketches are going up as striking paintings on the Bomas Rescue walls – with the help of Bomas social workers like John Ochieng and Martha Mumbi.
Their cement and steel sculptures are going to grace Bomas' barren lawn; and Yeh is even helping the children plant tree seedlings so that in future, they'll have shade and greenery instead of simply a barren, blackened view of the city's dirtiest dumping ground.
Not all the art on display at Ramoma is part of the KNH "Healing through Art" project. A number are by children who take part in the gallery's weekly art appreciation project. Some come from Streetwise, Hawkers Market Girls' Centre and Daraja Rescue Project, while a few are from Kenya High, Loreto Academy, King'ithua and Broomhill Primary.
Under the guidance of local artist Pat Keay, they find inspiration in the works of Kenyan painters like Rosemary Karuga, Henry Mzili, Fred Mutebi, Mary Collis (who co-owns Ramoma with Carol Lees), and Peter Ngugi.