Clare Hanbury

The RISKS of Participation to Children and Young People: The June focus of the Children's Participation Group

Here are notes from the last meeting of the Children's Participation Group. there are 8 of us in this group and all of us work in international development with a particular focus on the participation of children and young people. This month the topic we focused on was The Risks to Children and Young People from Participation.

We began the discussion by reminding ourselves of the tools that already exist to help guide organisations and individuals who wish to strengthen of develop participation of children and young people. Links to ethical guidelines (or participation resources containing ethical guidelines) can be found at the bottom of the note to this meeting.

Some of the ideas for keeping children and young people safe and reducing risk that may arise from participation are as follows:

• To ensure that organisations working with children and young people have policies and procedures relating to safeguarding and child protection in place and ensure that these are current, up to date and compressive enough to protect children and young people.

• We should ensure that children and young people are consulted on processes for keeping them safe in a way that allows their perspective the risks they feel they may face to be incorporated into procedures and along with their views on what could be done about it. A very practical example was given about children being consulted on the logistics of their journey to and accommodation at a participatory workshop. Some of the issues these children faced were risk of attack on the way to the event, the sleeping areas for boys and girls, adults and children.

• One of the blocks to promoting children’s participation is that adult say its too risky. Therefore it useful to get perspective from children on this. For example, consulting children on logistics or the participatory activities themselves. It sets the tone and expected practice.

•  The consultative process needs to be done in an age appropriate and careful way so as not to create anxiety. The impact of the type of questions and tools used to support children and young peoples participation needs to be thought through.

•  Children and young people need to be made aware of an organisations child protection policies. In addition, there needs to be an appointed child protection lead. Then children are encouraged to report to this person (or use the process outlined in the organisations procedures) if they have any concerns. The lead person needs to be  appropriately trained and gender issues taken into account.

•  A distinction needs to be made between safeguarding (creating safe environments/practice) and child protection (physical abuse, neglect).

•  We need to recognise that participation is a means to enhance children's self protection - children who have no voice can be targeted for abuse.

• Children and young people are not a homogenous group and what may work for one group may not work for others. We had an example of where young people felt hostile to work younger children were doing on conflict and conflict resolution.

• One problem about trying to understand the when’s of children’s participation is that developmental psychology theory has a different stance.  For example - Piaget, a central representative of 'childdevelopment' can be a start for discussion; main obstacle in his research is that the stages of development are quite fixed.

• There are many theories. However we thought that it may be useful if we could work together as a group to update theory on the evolving capacities of the child.

• We need to support children who are enabled within a workshop setting to consider how this enhanced skills or increased voice may have an in the ‘real’ world. We need to do this to ensure that they don’t put themselves at risk. This can be hard and especially for children who are especially vulnerable or marginalized and who could be left at grater risk as a result of a project and once the project has ended.

• Save the Children Sweden has explored the balance of protection and participation and risks involved. This is documented in an SCS report called 'CultivatingParticipation' available here: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/participation-virtue-must-be-cultivated.

• It’s also important to inform children and young how the information they generate will be used. Any information given to children must be in a child friendly format.

• These are sometimes ethical issues around adult agencies approaching children to get information and ideas from them, but lacking the willingness to respond to children’s own agenda.

• We talked about the potential to over consult with some groups of children – checks need to be made regarding who has worked with the children before and why and how this information was used.
• Check that CP is inclusive and the risks to vulnerable children if they are excluded. Risks can be straightforward or more complex e.g. risks to mental health, self-esteem etc. (sorry not sure i understand this and cant remember what we were talking about here)

•  Risk of overburdening children to participate and create a situation where due to social desirability children don't dare to refuse to participation.

• We need to prepare people to work with children. If working with teachers we need to build in an awareness on the distinctions between teaching and facilitating participatory work with children. A reelection that even when our colleagues KNOW what and how they should do – how easy it is to slip inadvertently into behaviour that they maybe inappropriate but which just come up.

• Its important to realise that working with children in a participatory way can be a huge step for some adults who never experienced this as children or were taught how to practice it as adults.

•  Reflective practice for practitioners is an important place to start. In places where there are deep inequities the ideas that underpin participation are highly challenging to implement and needs developing over the medium/long term.

•  The best facilitators are often the younger people who have a natural rapport with children. Its important to be alert to natural talent and to nurture and support them with continues training, development and other professional support.
•  Maybe we need a checklist of criteria for people who are suitable of this work? Involving children in recruitment is useful where possible.

News from Children’s Participation Group Members

We are all doing such varied and interesting work. This includes:

•  Child participation in Health and SMS messaging
•  CYP participation in health service design and delivery
•  CP and how poverty/low income impacts on disabled children’s rights (mainly social, economic and cultural rights)
• Helping to set up a counselling group run by children for other children, http://www.crc15.org/
•  CP and M&E work – Oak foundation project – forthcoming seminars and developing ideas around creating a digital hub for M&E work in CP
• Involving CYP in design of organisational assessments using qualitative and quantitative approaches
•  Internal youth mapping
• Regional analysis on community based child protection mechanisms supported by Plan in Asia;
• Engaged in M&E of children's participation (Oak funded) pilots with forthcoming webinars;
• Preparing for global advocacy with and by children's and young people's representatives on children, youth and peace building in New York in early September;
• Preparing training modules on child rights governance and humanitarian practice.
• Working on a paper concerning a life cycle approach to children, adolescent and youth participation in peace building
• Looking into the world bank’s lifecycle approach 10 + years

Possible actions formulating from the group:

We seem to often return to a need for more clarity or tips on how to use in practice the evolving capacity of child framework and understand how this has changed over time and across cultures. We spoke about looking at reports developed by Bernard Van Leer, on materials that have been developed on peace building and relayed to this. We agreed it would be great to trace a theory of change with children and young people.

Links to ethical guides to children and  young people's participation

http://www.ecpat.net/ei/Publications/CYP/CYP_report_Ensuring_ENG.pdf

http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/cypguide/resourceguide_ethics.html

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

You might like to join the conversation by joining the Children For Health Linked in community group.

Children's Participation in Health: The October Focus of the Child Participation Group

Theme of main discussion: children’s participation in health – identifying and overcoming resistance.

 Within some child focused agencies there is often increased focus on children’s participation in child protection and education, but less focus in the health sector.  In the health sector and in emergency work there is often a tendency to see children’s participation as less relevant, especially in terms of a timely, fast response that is needed to save lives. Despite the existence of excellent resources on children’s participation in health, especially through 30 years of the child-to-child approach which is focused on children’s participation in health, many of these rich and useful child friendly health education materials are not known or used by health practitioners.

Reasons for this were reflected upon and include:

• The orientation of health practitioners is medical, so when you are looking at doctors or health workers they are looking at it from their own specialised knowledge. Doctors may be more influenced by other medical practitioners, thus we need to get other doctors on board to advocate and convince them about children’s participation in health.

• Health staff in many INGOs currently have a key focus on maternal and child health (MDG3) engaging with women and infants under the age of 5 years. Thus, in terms of participation many health practitioners suggest that children under the age of 5 years are too young to be involved.

• While elder siblings often spend significant time as caregivers for their younger siblings in many parts of the world, their caregiving role is often not acknowledged or valued in terms of the need to engage with children as caregivers when undertaking health awareness or health interventions. While it is seen as normal for children to help take care of their younger siblings, the children have no status as caregivers.

• The new generation of health workers may not be aware the effectiveness and relevance of engaging children in health campaigns and health activities at household (and other) levels.

In terms of solutions to help convince health practitioners (doctors, health workers, health staff) about the relevance and importance of children’s participation and child centred approaches to health education and health promotion. Key strategies that are helpful include:

• Ensuring partnerships between health and education staff at every stage and at every single level  - this has been a key feature of child-to-child approaches to children’s participation in health education and health work. However, it can be difficult to bring two sectors together - e.g. education and health - we need to recognise this. It requires a lot of operational good will and efforts.

• Identifying champions – high level doctors and health workers who can advocate and influence their peers to value children’s participation and to involve children and young people in health initiatives.

• During training workshops on children’s participation in health draw upon medical practitioners’ expertise. In the process they also become exposed to potential that children and young people have.

• Use the 'like to like' principle – if you are advocating to the Ministry, you need to get someone from the Ministry involved to promote the idea.

• We need to identify ‘big hitters’ in terms of global health work who can advocate and champion.

• In the ‘Children investment fund’ and many other donors like The Gates Foundation there is a real focus on evidence based practice. We can look to see where entrance points may be for children to make a contribution to see how children's participation can be included. We can promote use of the framework on monitoring children’s participation to gather outcomes and evidence concerning children’s participation in health. For example, a project in Mozambique project will look at how school age children can have an impact on reducing chronic under-nutrition in under 5 years.  This focus is there as during the scoping assessments the staff involved recognised the role older children play in taking care of younger children, including feeding younger children and infants.

• We need to identify and/or support the development of powerful videos which clearly illustrates children’s role as caregivers of younger children.

• PRA tools such as a ‘day in the life of’... or ‘pie charts of time spent in daily activities’ were used more 15 years ago than now, but they remain useful tools to identify the different roles and responsibilities of different people in the household. Such tools can help family and community members really ‘see’ and recognise the roles that children are playing in caregiving of their younger siblings. Use of such PRA tools, and the revelations that it can lead to can be important entry points to further opportunities for children’s participation in health work.

• Identify issues that are at the heart of family and community life.  Nutrition-related issues uncovered during a recent assessment with children, teacher training students and in the community include the following:

• Myths and beliefs about food, what motivates food choices e.g. taste, price, availability, habit, and rituals.
• Power dynamics at meal times e.g.  – what male members of the household demand; recipes; habits; food combining; preparation; preservation; balance between snacks and meals; meal logistics and timings; food preparation; feeding practices; weaning; the introduction of weaning foods – timings and food used; the diet of breastfeeding mother; portion size;
• Community support to get knowledge about food; traditional birth attendants and grandmother’s role;
• Food allocation and gender issues; food serving; attending to eating during meals and portion size.

For children to be at the front line of improving nutrition for themselves and each other requires great sensitivity such that the roles of the parents are not undermined or challenged in ways that are inappropriate or potentially damaging. Each family’s circumstance and needs are unique and participatory methodologies are especially suited to meeting different needs. However it takes great skill and particular sensitivity to facilitate this process.

• A decade ago UNICEF’s creative communication (cartoons) ‘Meena’ (in Asia) and ‘Sarah’ (in Africa) were effective increasing awareness of the roles of girls, promoting child rights and non-discrimination.  Meena/ Sarah could be revived and/or newer modern versions can be developed and disseminated through social media and networking sites.

• It would be helpful to have the publication, ‘Children for Health’ online as a free supplementary resource for ‘Facts of Life’.

• A dynamic hub for sharing information, experiences and stories is needed. Stories of most significant change need to be documented and shared as they can inspire others, and others can learn from their experiences. For example, the story of the boy who helps prevent the spread of  cholera can inspire others to act and to support children’s participation in health.  There was a paediatrician who went to an orphanage during the Rwanda emergency where there were Rwanda children - acute case of cholera - he organised a competition with children on hand-washing and it had a significant effect on the cholera. He was staggered by what children could do and had achieved

• We can encourage child focused international agencies working on health to ensure that there national offices have access to child friendly health materials.

• One of the participants in this group is managing a project that distills 100 health messages for children to learn, collect and share  on 10 health tipics and that can be shared using mobile phones and the social media.

• We need to build capacity building on children’s participation into emergency preparedness for different sector staff, including health and nutrition staff.

For any readers interested in engaging with this discussion please ask to join this 'Linked in' Discussion Group - Children For Health..

Involve children in the 'send my friend to school' campaign.

Thanks to Karen Garvin for this guest post....The campaign she writes about is about inspiring young people everywhere to care about and speak out about getting every child access to schooling. Reading that there are 67 million children without access to education stopped me in my tracks today. Statistics rarely move me but this one did....

If you are able to involve the youngsters you work with to join this campaign please do....

Best wishes

Clare

 

Send My Friend to School 2012 –‘Go for Gold’

In just a few weeks athletes from around the world will converge on London for the Olympics to compete and achieve to the best of their abilities. But globally, 67 million children are still held back from reaching their potential because they don't get an education.

As part of the Global Campaign for Education every year millions of teachers and students from around the world remind their leaders of the important promise they made to get every child into school by 2015. And it is working; 50 million more children are in school right now than in 2000.

But like an athlete hitting the wall, progress has faltered. With only three years to go before the finish line of 2015, we need a new surge of energy to make sure all children get the chance to take part in the Great Education Race.

If you sign up to take part in Send My Friend to School in 2012 you can get a free resource pack, which includes a DVD, teachers guide, posters and stickers to introduce your school to taking part in this important campaign. http://www.sendmyfriend.org/take-action/order-schools-pack

Your school can join thousands of others to call on world leaders to get all children into school by 2015.

This year's campaign, inspired by the Olympic Games, calls on leaders to 'Go for Gold!' for education. Creative activity and teaching ideas will help learners engage with the issues, and empower them to raise their voices with their political representatives.

There are already over 5,500 UK schools taking part this year, asking world leaders to ‘Go for Gold’ and helping to get universal primary education.

At www.sendmyfriend.org you’ll find extra information about the campaign, including lesson plans, extra videos, case studies and background material.

The ‘Go for Gold’ online animation and game sets out the issues in a fun and accessible way, ideal for home and classroom use. http://www.sendmyfriend.org/take-action/go-for-gold

On current trends over 50 million children will still be out of school by 2015. So, its vital that we send a clear message to our leaders that they need to do more.  

Send My Friend to School is run by the Global Campaign for Education, a partnership of charities and teachers’ unions, and involves young campaigners in over 100 countries.

Guest Post: Miming Participation by Bill Badham

I am absolutely delighted to host this post on 'miming participation' by Bill Badham. Bill is one of the UK's leading thinkers on youth participation (and a lot more besides). Do go over and visit the site he runs with Tim Davis www.practicalparticipation.co.uk plus the excellent resources he suggests in this article.

Miming participation – reflecting on recent images

Bill Badham

Participation – the impossible mime

Two colleagues whispered to me to mime the word “participation.” This was in front of a range of government officials at a training event on the voice and influence of children and young people in government policy. Of course I tried heartily. But the more I tried the worse – and perhaps the funnier – it got. Folks gave up. It was a point well made. It is hard to mime participation. You cannot abstract participation from what you are participating in. So I mimed – and they got – what I was doing: tennis, football, chess – whatever else I tried. But it was harder for them to get and define the doing itself – the participating.

Fast forward ten years and I met a youth work manager in a local youth club who said he was “passionate about participation.” His oft repeated refrain left me more and more confused and wanting to ask “participation in what?” It struck me as dangerously irrelevant to children and young people’s lives if notions of their participation are separated out somehow from the immediate stuff that matters to them. It only makes sense where it is being worked out in the context of the matters that affect them – school, family, health, safety, culture, play and more widely local and national decision making. 

Participation built in

Our experience is simply that it requires care and commitment to help ensure the voice and influence of children and young people is safe, sound and effective in making a demonstrable difference to them as well as to the organisation or services they use. Participation needs to be built in not bolted on. Hear by Right draws on an internationally renowned model of organisational change. It is based on 7Ss which we adapted to participation. We added indicators as ideas or suggestions to show what might be done to see a standard embedded. Crucially, the 7S model highlights that most importance should be given to the diamond of shared values, style of leadership, staff and skills. Change should not be driven by the tough rigid triangle at the top of structures, systems and strategy. These are important - but only in relation to core purpose, vision and values.

 

 

(Peters and Waterman, 1982)

Participation – human right and procedural right

To take part, as shown in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is a human right. It is also, as explored above a means to an end – vital for the fullest attainment of all other rights to education, health, play, protection and so on. I wrote back in 2002 that “Participation is the keystone of the arch that is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is unique and holds the whole structure together. Without it the framework falls. Without the active participation of children and young people in the promotion of their rights to a good childhood, none will be achieved effectively.” This right for example is embedded in English domestic law on child protection in the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004. Georgia’s drawing below illustrates this powerfully and makes a deeper point. Georgia does not talk about participation, but about being welcomed, liked and respected, feeling part of her young carers group in Leeds and getting hugs from the worker who she trusts. Participation may start as transactional – give and take - but it cannot stay like this; it will either wither if not nurtured or it will grow to become about relationship, being and belonging.

 

 (Georgia, young carer, aged 12, Leeds)

Participation triangle

We need to get our means and ends right. Tools like Hear by Right helping build in participation are a means so that the services children and young people get become more effective and responsive so that they get a better deal as a result. A way to hold this tension is to see the three corners of a triangle: standards for building in participation bottom left; skills for children and young people to campaign and take action to help make change happen; and the apex – change as evidenced by children and young people themselves.

 

Keeping these three aspects in creative tension is critical. Hear by Right offers a range of materials and over ten years of shared learning to support organisations.

Act by Right looks to support building skills for action and making change happen. Its family of resources include community activism, tackling climate change and supporting young people to develop skills in organisational decision making. We recently added Leading for the Future, created for the Woodcraft Folk and useful to all those looking to take leadership seriously.

The apex of the triangle is of course change for children and young people, evidenced by them. Over a number of years we contributed to creating a rich archive of What’s Changed stories which were told following a simple pattern of: what children and young people said, what happened, what changed. These stories drew on different perspectives, but the crucial component – the magic box – was that those who were meant to have benefited said that they had (or had not) benefitted. They still read powerfully and we are keen to add to them and develop the library or stories that demonstrate the power of participation to affect change.

Participation matrix

When thinking about the involvement of children and young people, the picture below from Caitlin, aged 9, can help. She used it to tell her story of becoming involved in the Willow Young Carers project run by Barnardo’s in Leeds. Starting out in the bottom left corner when she first joined, feeling a bit alone and not very involved, she did however feel welcomed and listened to. This helped her gain wings of confidence through many helping hands, leading her to take further part in the things that mattered to her directly and made a difference to her. Drawing on these experiences, she began to get involved in things with other young carers toward the top right of her drawing. Roger Hart describes this link between participative democracy (taking part in the things that matter to me personally) and representative democracy (taking part with others in wider decision making).

 

 (Caitlin, young carer, aged 9, Leeds)

Participation – miming the impossible?

Most concerning in Caitlin’s drawing is the position of the big red blob, which she described as what happens if you try and do representational stuff without this being rooted in the lived everyday lives of the children and young people around you. A warning indeed to keep the practice of participation real and relevant and not abstract and disconnected. We are still looking for anyone who can convincingly mime participation. Let us know how you get on.

 April 2012

Bill Badham

Co-Director, Practical Participation

[email protected]

07540138967

Twitter: @billbadham

Children in Sri Lanka Tackle Obesity and Take Action to Improve their Parents' Health

Here is a great case study sent to me by Plan international in Sri Lanka about members of a children’s group in Galkadewala, Anuradhapura  and how they took action. It is a graphic illustration of the power of children to contribute to the improvement of their own and others' health.

“One day our village PHM visited our children’s club.  She discussed with us about the consequences of becoming over-weight.  She also explained that if our mothers and fathers are over-weight, it can reduce their life expectancy and also that they will have a lot of other difficulties in carrying out day to day activities.  Even though the way she explained all this did not frighten us, we deeply felt the gravity of it. 

We were determined that we should prevent our parents from becoming over weight.  So we learnt from her how to calculate the body mass index and waist to hip ratio.  We practiced it over and over again. We felt kind of proud of ourselves when we learnt this.  We were impatient to use this knowledge we had acquired.  So, on the following day itself, we started to work.  We didn’t have weighing scales, so we borrowed measuring tapes from our mothers and visited every household in the village measuring the waist to hip ratio of the adults.  We kept records of the values.  Afterwards, we went through these records and calculated the percentages.  PHM told us that it’s called analysing data.  We were surprised to find that most of our parents had a higher than normal waist to hip ratio.  When we found out this fact, the enthusiasm that we had to do something about it increased even more.  Also we were very proud of ourselves in knowing that we had the knowledge and skills to change it.  We knew usual health messages will not motivate the adults to change.  We thought of another way.  As an experiment, we selected 15 families where a parent had the highest waist to hip ratio.  We invited the children from those families to participate in an art exhibition.  Mr. Nandana from Plan and the PHM helped us.  We didn’t want to just draw pictures like we do every day.  We wanted to start a discussion with the other children about reasons that led to over weight of their parents through their drawings.  11 children participated in this exhibition.  The theme for the drawings was “My home at 7.30pm”.  Most of the children had drawn how their family members sat watching television.  Some had drawn how they take dinner watching television.  After they completed drawing, we discussed how we spend time in our families and how it leads to over -weight among our parents.  We told them how sugar, salt and oil leads to increasing weight.  Then they came up with examples as to how these food items are used in their homes.

Then we agreed on things we needed to do in order for our parents to live long.  One young friend suggested that we should always remind our mothers of reducing salt every time they prepared meals.  Another friend suggested that we should measure the waist to hip ratio every week and display it somewhere so that everyone in the family can see it.  We finished the discussion by agreeing to meet every week and discuss the progress.  Since we so badly wanted our parents to live along, we all carried out the things we agreed without fail.  Since we met every week and discussed, we were able to improve some of the actions.  Since we had become really good at measuring and recording waist to hip ratios and knew how to advise, even our parents were surprised and proud of us.  The PHM also told our parents about how competent we were so our parents did not object to what we did. They changed their practices gradually.

After three months we visited the houses again and measured the Waist to hip ratios. Out of the eleven, seven had reduced it down to the normal value. That was a progress of 64%. We were extremely happy. This happiness motivated us to take on to change a lot of other things related to our health. We asked our PHM to teach us some more about things that affect our health and we assured her that we can change them as well”.

Children Making Adults Lives Better in Sri Lanka

It is SO good to have this case study featuring child action from Sri Lanka sent to me by a colleague at Plan international. Thank-you for sharing it with me and with the readers of this blog.

If others have stories, photos or videos to share please contact me and I can feature them on this blog. It is stories like this that keep us going!

Children Make the Adult’s Lives Better:
An Experience from Children attending Children’s Clubs in Ampara, Sri Lanka

This story is from children in a children’s club in Damana MOH area which is situated in the Ampara district. This children’s club was not just a traditional children’s club in which the children only sing, dance and play. They went further with the vision of creating a “Happy Village”.  There are many successful achievements but this story illustrates some of them.

“We formed this children’s club with only 8 children at the beginning. Our mothers did not seem very interested in sending us to the children’s club at first. We discussed about this in the society thinking about what reasons may be causing this. We thought that mothers did not see any specific improvements or changes among us by being a member of a club. So we tried to address this issue strategically. We then tried to help our mothers by engaging more in household work like sweeping the house and helping her with cooking. We tried to demonstrate the love we had towards our mothers and that we cared for her.

During this, we found that it is not easy to work in the kitchen for a long time due to poor ventilation in the kitchen and stagnation of smoke within the house during cooking. This is when we realized that if it is difficult for us to stay in the kitchen for this little time how it could have been for our mothers. We could also link this to the occurrence of some illnesses among mothers and young children in the village. As small groups, we visited houses in the neighborhood in the village and built up simple chimneys (dum kawulu) in these kitchens, while doing certain other healthy changes like changing how the cooking salt was stored in the kitchen.

During the visits we felt that our relationship with the elderly people of the village was not very strong and that they were not happy about themselves. Because of this we wanted to make them happier. Therefore, our club arranged a special day to make the elders happy.  We invited all the grand mothers and grand fathers to this event. It was a surprise event for the elders, where they got the opportunity to sing, dance as well as to play as they did it forty, fifty years ago. This event sparked enthusiasm among the elders to engage in play activities once a week in the village grounds. We also organized a health promotion camp for the villagers and measured height, weight and calculated the BMI of the villagers.

We also found that the PHM of this area did not have a proper place to weigh the children. She did that using a branch of a Jack tree to hag the weighing scale. This resulted in very little children getting irritable and PHM could not weigh them properly. We went to the nearby forest, brought things, and built up a mud hut to weigh the children. The fathers who saw this work also helped us build this. After that, we found that this hut is not strong enough. We noticed that the old community centre which had been poorly maintained could be used more effectively for this. We got together, cleaned this area, painted the wall, and painted pictures on the wall. There was only one of us who could draw on walls nicely, but this did not prevent others from trying our hand at this. After this, we realized that there were eight of us who could draw fairly well.

With our participation at the club, the experiences we got helped built up our skills in broader range of subjects. Slightly older colleagues (adolescents) learnt new ways of discouraging alcohol and tobacco use among peers by informally addressing tobacco and alcohol issues in their groups.

Engaging in these activities has also resulted in increasing the number of children from eight to forty within a little over one year time period.

Children's Participation Group: March Meeting

Children’s Participation Group Meeting (March)
 

The Children’s Participation Group has grown!

Welcome Hannah Mehta, the children’s participation adviser from Save the Children UK, Claire O’Kane, a freelance consultant whose specialist interests include children’s participation and Sonal Zaveri, a consultant based in India who has  experience and interests in promoting children’s participation and who is also a monitoring and evaluation specialist.  Sarah Huxley could not join us for the meeting but sent a useful link that is included in the notes.

Having grown quickly we have decided on keeping the group to the size we are now and adopting a ‘one topic’ strategy for forthcoming monthly get-togethers. It’s also important that we leave enough time in our meeting for sharing news and any other tips and ideas.  Clare is creating a ‘waiting list’ for associates who may like to join us if one of our members steps away.  But please don’t wait till then to begin talking to us. We welcome our friends and associates to add comments, contribute guest blogs etc.- right away.  In addition, any associate (or anyone else for that matter!) is encouraged to start up a ‘sister’ group with whom this group could exchange. All ideas and comments on these ideas are welcome.

The March Meeting
Our March meeting aimed to share ideas and resources on four child participation related topics: 

• Mapping training needs ;
• The use of mentoring to support post training activities;
• The use of active learning methods and the distinction between active learning and activity in workshop-based training; and
• The importance of communicating information visually.

Topic 1: Mapping training needs

Resources:
The first question we set out to explore was: what tools were out there to use as a pre-training workshop assessment? And linked to this, how we might assess how a particular training event was likely to be regarded by trainees and how followed up once completed. I had been hunting for tools but I had not found much of interest. This pre-workshop training needs assessment was suggested by one of the group members and can  be usefully adapted. We were also reminded of the Oak Foundation pilot project in Monitoring and Evaluating CP and the matrices of indicators in the framework document and the tools. Click here for the link to these. A power point overview on the pilot of this can be uploaded here.  All this is good material to use when designing training needs assessment – depending on the aims of the training or workshop event. Do others reading this have tools they can recommend or ideas to share on mapping? Please tell us more if you do.

Issues we discussed re: Mapping training needs at the organisational level:

• The importance of understanding the ‘buy in’ and ‘support’ that already exists (and lack of it as well) is crucial for those designing training. Without sufficient ‘buy in’ from managers and country directors it is unlikely training will have impact after it is completed.
• If we want participants to actually initiate or enhance children’s participation, not just in the programmes they implement but in their organisations as well – and this is central to ensuring sustainability of CP – then we need to ensure we know enough about the organisations who are nparticipating in the training as well as the organization who has commissioned it.
• Managers often have less experience than others both on the theory and the practice of children’s participation and thus the training itself can be a vehicle for advocating the ideas and approaches.

The importance of trying to go ‘below the radar’ on child participation and using our experience, anticipate what the challenges and opportunities might be at both an individual and organizational level. An understanding of this can help feed the design of training activities/session that  ensure participants feel happy with the aims of the training from the start. 

CP is often regarded as a cross cutting theme and as such a candidate for mainstreaming within organizations. Thus when mapping training needs there is a need to understand where CP stands in terms of mainstreaming CP? In the organization itself (e.g. is it in job descriptions?). It may feature and be strong/weak in some surprising places that may not be immediately obvious. (Within the organization itself, within programming, aligned to individual values among key staff etc.)

Unpacking terms:

• Prior to mapping – there is a need for unpacking/consensus building as to what CP actually is/is not.
• ‘Child rights’ also needs re-visiting CP may be culturally defined and varies in different contexts and culture.
• The point of mapping training needs is to understand and then build upon the conditions for participation work to thrive after the training. is this repeat now?
• Training needs to be tailored to the needs of different groups within an origination so that some  sessions may need to be adapted for managers. It is difficult and often unnecessary for managers to attend the whole training, but they do need some orientation at the same time as their staff so that there is a dialogue prior to the end of the training to actually look at the opportunities and barriers for increasing CP in the organization itself
•  It can be useful to include young facilitators in the training.

Ethical principles

The Oak Foundation project above uses the  general requirements set out in the CRC General comment on Article 12 as indicators to monitor and evaluate quality participation. These include attention to  ethical practice of CP. An ethical approach needs to be embedded at the beginning. We reflected on how the more experienced people are the more they are aware of and are able to discuss ethical issues and that a question about ethical issues or standards in children’s participation is a useful tool to understand how trainees have an existing grasp of how to ‘do’ children’s participation!)

Topic 2: Mentoring

The use of mentoring to strengthen training in children’s participation was also discussed. Mentoring is usually done on a one to one basis (phone/skype or face to face) and can be used at an individual level after training to deepen learning.  It is especially suited to a dynamic where an individual has to make practical changes in their approach and within a challenging environment.

The group reflected on the following issues:

• Does someone need to be trained as a mentor? What are the distinctive skills and can they be acquired in a training? Are there some who are just naturally better mentors than others?  We also  know that  experts do not always make good mentors.
• What a good mentor needs most of all is coaching skills that elicit the ideas and potential of the mentor partner. The term is used advisedly because the relationship should not imply a dominant and an apprentice relationship but rather a partnership of near equals. 
• A paradox about mentoring is that, in real life, mentors or role models are not ‘allocated’ to others: they are chosen, often unknown to themselves, by others who consider them mentors. How then, do we transfer this naturally occurring phenomenon into a more openly articulated relationship and create a framework within which to operate it, while remaining true to its origins?
• Organisations can set up mentor training. One of the members of the group has co-developed a model for mentor training in INGO’s. She is happy to share this privately with those interested.
• An important feature of good mentoring (like children’s participation!) is an enabling environment for the mentee.
•  It is difficult to get organisations to ‘buy’ mentor training and none of us know of organisations who currently use mentoring after training in a formal and strategic way.  Is this something we may want to explore and/or develop further as a post-training strategy?
• Do we need to rephrase ‘mentoring’ and call it instead something like ‘supportive supervision and link it closely to monitoring?’
• A group such as this is a group where we are mentoring and supporting each other to deepen our work and do it better so – maybe there are different systems of mentoring? And again, this group came together in a relationship of ‘equal, but different’ and an understanding that for us, diversity is strength.  So the paradox of mentoring lives on.
• Maybe we need to clarify/identify the skills that are the linchpins around which mentoring operates.  Do others have thoughts they want to contribute to this?
• We all agreed that in our work we switch roles from a directive style facilitator (useful for skills development where a way of doing something can be right or wrong) to a more empowering style of facilitation where the expertise is shared, to mentoring where the mentor partner is the one who is at the center of their own solutions.
• In mentoring the Mentor will be learning a great deal from the mentor partner.
• Internal and external mentors are both useful and fulfill different functions.
• One of the groups had the experience of a professional life coach supporting the organisation and helping individuals to solve problems. She found it amazing and really helpful.
• In a way children's participation IS about becoming a mentor and a coach to the children vs. being a teacher and this should be modeled all the way up.
  

Topic 3: Active Learning for Adults in Training Workshops on Children’s Participation

We need to model active learning and thinking in our training if we want participants to learn and use it in their participatory work with other adults and children. We wanted to share more about our experience of participatory training workshops and the strategies we use to ensure they are not just an overdose of unsatisfactory group activities and group work which do not achieve the objectives of the session or the aims of the workshop. What we aim for can be called ‘serious fun’! The problem with active learning for adults, as indeed for children, is that the ‘activity’ can take over and become an end in itself. It is frustrating when that happens and when the reflection that should accompany an activity is simply lost in the activity itself.  So participants are so focused on the presentation that the learning is left behind and the problem is ours. The topic came up because of that.  There are a number of strategies that we need to re-visit and some new ones to get at this ‘active learning’ for adults.

The jig saw classroom where each group takes and learns about a different piece of the jigsaw. Attention to feedback is heightened as the participants groups are all doing something different. This would require very carefully planning by the facilitator and clear direction – especially if they’re as scope for groups to underperform when the rest of the group relied on their colleagues for this ‘piece of the jigsaw’. There is more on the steps to setting up the jigsaw classroom here.

Other ideas that the group shared included:

• The debate approach (even adults get very attached to their ‘position’ even if this is the opposite of what the group consensus is and this can be funny.) For example, debating the issue: By introducing children’s participation we are going to ruin our project.
• We can ask adults to read and prepare before training (although some will and some won’t).  they are adults after all and a bit of advanced reading would not hurt but we have been taught to shy away from all of that in our ‘bitesize’ world.
• We can also use different forms of quizzes
• Recognise the value of the lecture method when used well. We reflected on the fame and effectiveness of the inspiring Reith Lectures and the TED talks.
• We touched on the ideas around adult learning styles and the theory of multiple intelligences. The main point we draw is that we need to pass on the need for understanding your own learning style and then any teaching or training we do need to find a balance in the techniques we use. There is a lot online on this and here’s a place to start.
• Most of us have used a system of reflecting learning styles and techniques used openly, explicitly and throughout training ( keeping a running list). In this way participants analyse what you the facilitator is doing while they are experiencing it.  Anise has a few strategies that she put down on paper and is happy to share with others if they feel they want more on this.

The importance of communicating information visually

This topic was introduced by a useful web link to a way in which information is being visualized for learning. Here is an example: provided by one of the group. The work of Hans Rosling is amazing. Have a look at how he is mapping health. At the Street Child World Cup children’s rights conference in Durban (March 2010) a ‘wordle’ was used to visualize the key words children came up with as an outcome of a participatory activity to introduce sessions on children’s perceptions of home, violence and access to health and education. The wordle also sorts out ranking. The results were amazing. The children found them empowering, uniting and beautiful. And here is the wordle site.  Does anyone else have any thoughts or resources to share?

I feel this was a pretty good outcome from a 60 minute meeting!

The Voice of the Child: Molly in Kenya

I've discovered this video series about Molly - a 12 year old Kenyan living in a low income area in Nairobi, Kenya. I find the way that Molly's voice begins to be heard - inspiring. This is episode 6. I have watched most of them! I am inspired by the joyful crowd of children at the very end and their potential to act as health workers in their families and communities - not later after they have studied - but NOW!

 

I was also inspired today by watching some of the films made by Film Africa. Take a look.

 

 

Institutionalising Children's Participation

Today and in relation to quite a large scale government programme that I'm involved with, I was pondering some more on how we go about institutionalising children's participation. The education sector and 'the school' is the most obvious focus for our attention as schools often form an hub for families and the community that can not only reflect what society wants for its children but also challenge and develop this.

I like many aspects of the UNICEF Child Friendly School initiative and I was reminded of this checklist they have developed (see below). What I also like is that their definition of 'child friendly school' includes the ideas of being 'child centred' and 'child seeking' ( i.e. actively identifying excluded children to get them enrolled in school and included in learning, treating children as subjects with rights and State as duty-bearers with obligations to fulfill these rights, and demonstrating, promoting, and helping to monitor the rights and well-being of all children in the community.) I have not come across the term 'child seeking' before, and I like it.

For schools to really be child friendly they will need to 'unpack' a lot of the ideas listed below but the list is a good start. If any of you would like to unpack the list with me then let me know! I am having a go and with the help of the Oak Foundation's M&E framework for children's participation which is already becoming threadbare with overuse!

13 CHARACTERISTICS OF A RIGHTS-BASED, CHILD-FRIENDLY SCHOOL

1. Reflects and realises the rights of every child  --  cooperates with other partners to promote and monitor the well-being and rights of all children; defends and protects all children from abuse and harm (as a sanctuary), both inside and outside the school

2. Sees and understands the whole child, in a broad context -- is concerned with what happens to children before they enter the system (e.g., their readiness for school in terms of health and nutritional status, social and linguistic skills), and once they have left the classroom -- back in their homes, the community, and the workplace

3. Is child-centred -- encourages participation, creativity, self-esteem, and psycho-social well-being; promotes a structured, child-centred curriculum and teaching-learning methods appropriate to the child’s

Guest Post: Training Adults on Children's Participation in Protecting Themselves and Others from Abuse

I am delighted to host this fascinating guest post written by Barbara Lill Rastern in which she reflects on training adults on children's participation in protecting themselves and others from abuse. Barbara is a consultant who has conducted several training workshops in which she has been training practitioners and training trainers to take forward the ideas of children's participation in child protection in their organisations. She can be contacted at the following email address: [email protected]

When I was a young girl growing up in a sleepy Austrian hamlet,  I remember being given the rule to 'be wary of strangers, not to talk to them and not by any means enter their cars' because they can be dangerous. I had question marks in my head. After inquiring with my parents and other children. I dealt with the information that they (men, of course) 'can do bad things to your body'. The question marks in my head were only marginally smaller and still I stuck to the rule; although being encumbered by a kind of 'nebulous anxiety' along with it.

I was not given accompanying information or education in regard to sexual development, possible forms of abuse by adults or peers, child rights, child protection, let alone participation.

 

Some of the children I have worked with as a trainer and consultant for child participation and protection  unfortunately do know exactly what this means because they have either experienced abuse themselves or know of peers having suffered from it.