LIFE on the streets is tough. And you need a high level of tolerance and patience to deal with street kids, some of whom wait around in the city's shadows for their next victim to pounce on.
They've been labelled hoodlums and larrikins among others and people are warned to stay away from them to avoid being mugged.
For Usaia Cirikiwai, 29, it's different. He seeks them out in the gutters where they hang out and live with one aim - try and rehabilitate them so they can find an honest way of making money.
Mr Cirikiwai, of Ovalau, a member of the Youth Ink Fiji, is one of the nominees for the Pride of Fiji Awards for inspiration.
He has been dealing with abandoned adolescents, school dropouts and kids from broken homes the past five years.
One of the boys he saved from the street recently joined the British Army, while others learn to operate their own private business.
Street kids, he says, prefer to sleep on the warm street corners, rather than go home to a drunken father or face their own families who look down on them.
"You'll discover a lot of things when you get involved in volunteering work and touch base with kids on the streets," he says. "Some things you can talk about and some you prefer not to."
Usaia was formerly the director of the Chevalier Hostel in Suva, a home that looks after street kids and runaways.
He says he wants young people on the streets to do something better with their lives.
Forcing them into pilot programs to get them occupied and their minds away from the street life, he believes, will never work.
"I've discovered it doesn't take long for a kid to end up back on the streets after he finds proper employment. Most of them can't even keep their jobs," Usaia says.
"A lot of them prefer to hang around the town as wheelbarrow and shoeshine boys."
Usaia's office at Chevalier has often been broken into and he has been bruised and let down by street kids in the past.
"But this doesn't stop me, it's those personal experiences with some of these kids that keep me going. I listen to their stories and their cries," he says.
"If I had 1000 street kids to look after and I manage to get through to one of them, I will be happy.
"I've chosen to take this path and I will stick to it."
