Clare Hanbury

Guest Post: The Power of the Youth, Young People in Pakistan Fight for the Right to Education

I am very pleased to host this excellent article by Lisa Davis of Rights International. In it she reflects on the work of the Ilmpossible – a youth lead campaign in which young people participate in raising awareness of children’s rights to education.

 Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world,

indeed it’s the only thing that ever has’- Margaret Mead

A steering committee of 20 young people from across Pakistan are leading a national campaign to raise awareness of the right to education for children and young and improve the state of education in Pakistan. This is a right granted under article 25A of the constitution, inserted by the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010. However, their is currently a lack of awareness to this rights and enforcement within the country is weak.

The Ilmpossible steering group coordinates a national network of ambassadors, which work across the five provinces. The steering group along with the wider network, carry out awareness raising sessions within local communities, they talk with children, young people and families about the right to an education and encourage parents to use the current school within the local area and make demands on the local government when provision is bad. They also use media to spread the work about the right to a free education for children and young people aged 5 to 16 years. This has including writing articles, producing radio shows and using social medial like Facebook and Twitter.

An Ilmpossible Ambassador deliver a presentation on the rights to education to parents in a village in Sindhi.

Mehak Ameer an Ilmbossible ambassador said: We have serious concerns about the state of education in Pakistan. This is leading to educational crisis in the country, which is threatening the social and economic well-being of the nation. We want to help ensure people know about, speech up for and access there right to education.

The Ilmpossible ambassadors, have drive and ambition to ensure children and young people receive their right to education in Pakistan and they have much work to do. Despite they’re being a constitutional right to free education the Pakistan Task Force in 2011 declared an education emergency.

Only 7 million children out of the estimated 19 million primary aged children are in school. Public expenditure remains unacceptably low and out of the child in education 21% dropout before the age of 11 years.

The steering committee currently meets twice a year and have recently took part in a 5-day programme aimed at exploring participant and advocacy. As part of the programme the steering group examined issues like strengthening and coordinating national and regional action plans, developing stakeholder relations with international groups like UNICEF and national groups like the Pakistan Coalition for Education. They also looked at designing and delivering seminars and tools such as reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

An IImpossible training meeting attended by the author of this article, Lisa Davis

 Mehak Ameer said: Those five days certainly provided me a great opportunity to learn. Each one of us has unique skills based on our experiences. Sharing of skills undoubtedly help us in reaching our goals ensuring people access their right to education the activities facilitated by a team have provided us with new ways of  effectively being a voice of the voiceless.

Supporting Ilmpossible does not stop here. Six of the ambassadors will come to the UK to take part in a further 5 days of workshops. These workshops aim to develop the young peoples leadership skills, networking capacity, see youth led campaigns in action in the UK and allow them to see how education system is administered in UK.

1. Rights International is a non-government organisation working to promote and protect children’s human rights. Rights international focuses on support children’s right to education, health care and rights to participate in decision-making. The work of Rights International is led by Lisa Davis CEO.
2. Ilmpossible is a youth led campaign to raise awareness of children’s right to education

For further information please contact

Lisa Davis; Rights International

Twitter: Rights_inte

07854187396 

Guest Post by Adam Fletcher: Perspective Determines Participation

Here's a guest post by the wonderful Adam Fletcher

Perspective Determines Participation

 

Adam Fletcher with youth in Miami, Florida in 2011

 The movement for children’s participation seems to be strengthening around the world. Between the forceof the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the massive technological transformations occurring, governments, nonprofits, schools, and other institutions are being forced to reconsider their assumptions about young people. This is especially true in public health, where the work of Clare Hanbury and other advocates is moving children’s participation from the periphery to the centre of attention.

However, it’s the type of attention children and youth receive that determines the quality, efficacy, and sustainability of children’s participation. The type of attention adults give young people is determined by their perspective of young people.

Perspectives of children and youth are determined by many factors. Culture is the largest; education, religion, governmental laws, and economics reinforce these perspectives. My decade-long action research effort, driven through The Freechild Project I founded in 2001, has shown me exactly what these perceptions are. Following is my analysis.

The first perspective of young people is apathy. Apathy happens when adults consciously or unconsciously choose to be indifferent toward young people. Adults choose not to see children and youth. Mutually enacted upon by both youth and adults.

After apathy is a completely top-down perspective by adults towards young people. It is called pity. Viewing young people with pity actively places adults in a position of complete superiority over children and youth. It positions young people as being completely incapable of providing anything for themselves. By positioning adults in absolute authority, pity extinguishes young peoples’ self-esteem and incapacitates their developing senses of agency and purpose. When adults see young people with people, they dehumanize children and youth.
 
Perceiving youth with sympathy can be alluring to adults. It allows adults to give to children and youth what they apparently cannot acquire for themselves, and to do that from a position of compassion. This includes material, teaching, emotional support, or otherwise. However, sympathy disengages young people from actively cultivating what they need for themselves. It singularly positions adults to give to children and youth without acknowledging they are receiving anything from them in return.

Perceptions of young people take a completely positive turn when empathy is the lens we look through. Reciprocity is the key to establishing empathy with young people. Empathy allows adults to see young people in a more equitable way by identifying that they are receiving something as well as giving it. Adults acknowledge young people as partners, and vice versa. Each becomes invested in the others’ perception. If an empathetic relationship were drawn in 3D, it would show a conveyor belt between young people and adults to represent their reciprocal relationship.

The last perception, solidarity, is reflected in completely honest, completely equitable relationships between young people and adults. This perception fully recognizes the benefits and challenges in relationships between adults and young people, and operates from a place of possibilities rather than problems. It may be the most challenging perception to maintain because of it’s completely alien existence throughout our society.

There are many important considerations to recognize about adult perceptions of young people. One consideration is that adults do not maintain one perception of all children and youth all the time. While there are predominate perceptions, there are also exceptions to the rule. Another is that acknowledging these perceptions is not about “good” and “bad” – they simply are. Adults simply cannot operate in complete empathy towards young people all the time; likewise, children and youth cannot be expected to care for every single adult they ever meet.

Using these perceptions of young people as a starting point, the challenge for adults becomes whether they can consciously, critically, and creatively reflect on their attitudes, behaviors, and ultimately, their perceptions. While adults do this it’s their obligation to keep an eye towards further developing their practice in order to be more reflective of our perspectives of young people. Perspectives determine participation, and all people want to successfully participate.
 
REFLECTION QUESTIONS

• How do you treat people differently because of their age?
• How does your behavior towards young people differ at home, work, and throughout your community?
• What do you think the outcomes of different perceptions of young people are?
• Do children and youth have different perceptions of adults? Why or why not, and if so, how?

To contact Adam please address correspondence to [email protected]. To access more of his incredible work click here: Common Action

Guest Post by Claire O' Kane: Children's Agency and Participation

This week, I am delighted to share this fascinating 16-page paper with you written by one of the leading thinkers and practitioners in children's participation, Claire O'Kane. Click on the link to download the paper as a pdf.

Children’s agency and participation – its relevance for development, peace, and human rights: reflections on practice from diverse contexts.

In this paper which draws upon both the human development and the human rights paradigm, Claire emphasises the relevance of children's agency and active participation to development, peace and human rights. She reflects on practice that enables the  identification of some of the implications, processes, ethics, and outcomes of rights based approaches to engaging with children and young people as social actors and rights holders. In the final part of the paper Claire outlines opportunities to increase children's participation and agency, and she introduces a framework to monitor and evaluate children’s participation, so that children’s contributions as active citizens to development, peace and human rights can be increasingly recognised and supported.

Next week , look out for a guest post by the marvellous Adam Fletcher. There is little Adam does not know about youth particiaption from the very deepest theoretical places through to the best of all practice. Do not miss it.

Guest Post by Sarah Huxley: Adolescent Girls and Safe Spaces

Hi readers and Happy New Year! I have been quiet for a few weeks and this reflect a wildly busy time away from my desk! First in Mozambique working for DANIDA looking at how children can be mobilised to contribute to under-nutrition in the country and second having a GREAT time with my huge family over the festive season. Its refreshed and exhausted me in equal measure. I am ready for the new year and excited by the work ahead.

One of the things I would like to do more of this year is to invite associates to publish posts on my blog. Here is the first of these from Sarah Huxley. It focuses on adolescent girls and safe spaces. Many of you may know about or even use a tool I've described many times to  diagnosing potential blocks to development projects. The tool asks users to assess four categories of components: knowledge, skills, motivation/inspiration and environment. When one of these is left out of or neglected in a project there is far less chance that the project will succeed (like a bus cannot move forward without all four wheels). In her article, Sarah focuses on a much neglected theme of providing girls with a type of environments for them to develop and feel able to participate. A link to Sarah is at the bottom of her post. Enjoy!

Adolescent girls and safe spaces: do we really know what we mean when we refer to these in international development?

Adolescent girls – a tremendous force for change within the ever turning wheel of development. Often girls aged 10-19 are labelled as agents of change in poverty reduction. I believe that understanding adolescent girls’ mobility and use of space (both formally and informally) is paramount in order to create an enabling environment, which can allow individuals/groups of girls to imagine a different life experience, and subsequently, act upon that vision.

The purpose of these musings, is therefore to emphasise the importance of creating ‘safe spaces’ as a first step in programming for adolescent girls; and to encourage us practitioners to really explore what we mean (and do) when we refer to a ‘safe space.’ 

An article by Madfis et al. (2010) from Save the Children notes that ‘safe spaces’ are a common component of humanitarian assistance, whereby they are often used as a stepping stone for restarting formal