In the shadow of Table Mountain, Africa's “mother city” Cape Town is raising more than one thousand children on her city streets. Spanning three years and shot in an observational form, Stroller is the story of adolescent poverty told from the point of view of three of these children. Although 14-year-old Leon still lives at home, he heads to Cape Town after school everyday because he can make money and get better food on the street than he can at home. Medicated on glue, begging and playing with his friends, Samson, 13, believes his life is better on the street than in the squatter camp in which he was born. And Ralph, 33, regretfully admits that after 26 years in Cape Town, street-life is the only life he knows and leaving at his age is no longer an option.

Although the film uses these very personal and sometimes emotional narrative threads to humanize the experience of adolescent poverty, Stroller is ultimately an exploration of those aspects of the street child's environment that lure them to the city and then hold them captive. Through vignettes on rehabilitation, prevention, corporate social responsibility, and unbridled philanthropy, we see well-intentioned social services go awry, community-based initiatives stymied by local politics, corporate social responsibility acting irresponsibly, and personal donations doing more harm than good. Along the way a surprising truth emerges about the detrimental effects that misinformed social services and unregulated philanthropy can have on the development of a child and a nation.