Two former street children have bagged nominations in this year’s Kalasha Film and TV Awards.

Patrick Macharia and Elizabeth Sande, both aged 12, have been nominated as Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actress in a film, respectively. The two budding thespians starred in the made for TV mini-series, Child4Hire, produced by the Amref Dagoretti Film School in 2014.

Peter Ofware, programme manager, Reproductive Maternal Adolescent and Child Health at Amref Health Africa in Kenya, commended the young actors and called on the public to vote for them online.

“This nomination goes to show that the mini-series has created awareness of plight of children who end up in the streets. Child4Hire means just that, our children are being hired into criminal acts and a life of crime by quite innocently trying to survive these mean streets of Nairobi. In addition to being exposed to hunger, cold and disease,” said Ofware.

Directed and produced by Peter Gitau, also a former project beneficiary, Child4Hire tells the story of a 12-year-old orphan, Samantha (Elizabeth Sande), who ends up in the streets of Nairobi and has to survive a harsh world of crime, hunger and fear. Buju (Patrick Macharia) acts as her friend and a ring leader of young street survivalists in a cast made up entirely of children from the Amref Dagoretti Children Centre. It was shot on location in the streets of Nairobi and at the Amref Dagoretti Children Centre.