'Budget for Children Analysis' Toolkit

Exciting work is going on in relation to budgeting on children's issues.
I will list here some documents that look at ways of involving children in developing and monitoring budgets related to children's issues.
The 'Budget for Children Analysis' Toolkit is a joint effort by HAQ: Centre For Child Rights and Save the Children, which provides steps for analyzing State Budget allocations and monitoring government commitments to Child Rights. The toolkit has been designed to demystify and elucidate in easy-to- understand language the concept of ' Budgeting for Children'. It aims to strengthen the capacities of civil society organisations in undertaking Child Centred State Budget Analysis, as an effective way to advocate for appropriate budget allocations for children issues and good governance, and to hold governments accountable for fulfilling children's rights.

The right to be properly researched: How to do rights-based, scientific research with children

This is a boxed set of 10 concise and easy to handle manuals for fieldworkers, giving step-by step guidance, linked to downloadable website materials and covering all aspects of research from conception to report writing.

















Manual 1
Where do we start? explains the rights-based approach to research with children and how it relates to other research approaches.
Manual 2
How do we protect children? deals with the ethical rules and methods necessary in all research with children.
Manual 3
How can we be good researchers with children? provides information necessary for training, so that all researchers are fully equipped to work with children.
Manual 4
What do know already and what do we want to know? sets out the procedures of deciding on research topics and questions.
Manual 5
How are we going to find out? takes researchers through the process of choosing research methods and designing and piloting research tools.
Manual 6
How can we get the best data? provides guidance on research planning and management.
Manual 7
How do we count data? details the processes necessary for numerical analysis.
Manual 8
What do numbers mean? demonstrates the means of changing numerical results into meaningful answers to research questions.
Manual 9
How do we write the report? provides guidance on writing clear reports about research results for a variety of readers, including children.
Manual 10
Research dictionary, is an easy reference dictionary that clarifies the meanings of research terms as they are used in the rights-based approach.

The manual is written by Judith Ennew together with Tatek Abebe, Rattana Bangyai, Parichart Karapituck, Anne Trine Kjorholt and Thanakorn Noonsup, and it can be seen as the ultimate remake of Children in Focus - a Manual for Participatory Research with Children, which she wrote together with Jo Boyden in 1997 and which has been highly popular with people doing research with children.

I normally only publish information here that is available for free on the web, but this case warrants an exception. The printing costs need to be recovered before it can be made available on the web.

US$39.99 a set including postage and packaging

>A powerpoint presentation can be downloaded from the Knowing Children website with further information

Boxed set of 10 paperback manuals
English, diagrams and tables
ISBN: 978-616-7333-00-7

Children's Protagonism - Distant Learning Course

Exciting things are happening in distant learning courses on children's protagonism, children's rights and concepts of childhood.

The Institute for the Formation of Educators of Working Youth, Adolescents and Children of Latin America and the Caribbean (IFEJANT) has opened an on-line course on "old and new paradigms of childhood". The duration is from March 24 - June 27 2008.

Fees are very reasonable: 50 (fifty) USD for the full course.

For that amount you will get:
1. The support through email of a full-time teacher from a pool of experts on issues of family and childhood
2. Access to thought provoking (and often non-mainstream and therefore little known) literature on childhood, children's rights, children's participation and protagonism
3. Access to a Latin American discourse on childhood and children's rights through exclusive translations into English of texts that have been only published in Spanish
4. A certificate of IFEJANT and the School for Social Work of the Main National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru (indicating the academic hours fulfilled)

The course content:

Unit 1
The concept of Childhood
The vision of childhood in the Andean and Amazonian Worlds
Approaches and paradigms in childhood cultures

Unit 2
Searching for a new pedagogic thinking
Child dignity
Dismissing the language we use with children - metacommunication
Advancing towards cultures that promote learning communities

Unit 3
A childhood with rights - from an object to a subject with rights - the child as a social actor
Rights and duties of children in comparative legislation - Evaluation of the rights situation of girls, boys and adolescents in different parts of the world.

The course will consist of reading a number of key texts followed by written assignments and self-reflection.

Enrollment: http://www.ifejants.org/ Scroll down the page, download and fill in the admission card and send it to: Ifejants@hotmail.com

Child and youth participation resource guide

Publication:
Child and youth participation resource guide
By Junita Upadhyay. 2006, Bangkok: UNICEF. isbn 974 68507 2 5

This resource guide has been very popular from the moment it came out and it is now available on the web. The good thing about this guide is the categorisation in different areas and the fact that most documents are downloadable from the internet.

From the guide:

The participation of children and youth in schools, community action, media, and governance has gained growing support over the past 15 years. This interest in their active involvement is being stimulated by a greater recognition of children’s and youth citizenship and their rights to expression.

This Child and Youth Participation Resource Guide was jointly compiled by UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office and published in June 2006, as a response to a growing need to organize the large and diverse literature on children's participation. It provides information on publications that focus on the protection of children and adolescents from exploitation, violence and abuse, child and youth participation in community and national programmes, HIV prevention, health, hygiene and sanitation and more.

How to Use This Document

This document is divided into several sections focusing on different areas in which the participation of children and youth have been prominent. In each section the author, title and brief summary of the document is included and hyperlinks are given for the full text PDF version for each publication. The link will lead you to an outside web platform. An e-mail address of the appropriate contact person has been provided when the publication cannot be directly linked. Please contact this individual/organization to acquire the document.

The Adolescent Development and Participation Unit at UNICEF Headquarters is presently preparing to make this guide available as an interactive web-based resource for wider use by its staff, partners, governments, policy makers, non-governmental and civil society organizations and especially children and youth themselves.

Creating an enabling environment

Creating an Enabling Environment - Capacity Building in Children's Participation, Save the Children Sweden, Vietnam, 2000-2004. By Henk van Beers, Vo Phi Chau, Judith Ennew, Pham Quoc Khan, Tran Thap Long, Brian Milne, Trieu Tri Anh Nguyet, and Vu Thi Son. Bangkok, 2006, Save the Children Sweden, Southeast Asia and Pacific Regional Office.

Since 2000, Save the Children Sweden in Viet Nam has operated a programme to build the capacity of adults at all levels in facilitating children’s participation with the long-term aim of raising awareness of children’s potential for political participation, not only in Viet Nam but regionally and internationally.
In order to build the basis for planning future programmes to further children’s participation in Viet Nam and elsewhere, Save the Children Sweden commissioned a research assessment which combined three simultaneous research processes using a single research protocol to assess:
• Children-friendly activities in Ho Chi Minh City
• Vietnamese national forums for children
• The impact of the capacity-building programme in Viet Nam, the Southeast Asia and
Pacific region, and globally.
The research process was rights-based, including children’s views and experiences, using appropriate methods and ethical procedures. Building on previous documentation of Save the Children’s promotion of children’s participation, the information in this Report will assist other efforts to ensure that children’s participation becomes both an everyday reality and a high-quality, meaningful experience for the children and adults involved in similar processes worldwide.

Adults First!

For children's fundamental participation rights to be realised, it is adults, not children, who most urgently need to learn. Children's participation rights demand that adults listen to children, understand them and take action based on what children say. Adults often need to encourage children to participate and provide opportunities for them to do it. Thus, children’s rights to participate is, for now at least, heavily dependent upon adults.

More and more organisations working in the field of children’s rights see the need to train their staff in how to facilitate children's participation. Although they recognise that children have the right to be involved in informing, designing, implementing and evaluating programmes that can directly influence their lives, these organisations have found that providing meaningful opportunities for children to do it is a good deal more challenging than perhaps they expected. One important and often overlooked fact is that, for an organisation to involve children properly, everyone from programme managers to finance and personnel officers down to staff in day-to-day contact with children needs to have at least an understanding of the key practical and ethical concerns in facilitating the participation of children.

Adults First! describes a typical organisational training on children's participation run by Save the Children Sweden for a small Cambodian NGO, the Child Rights Foundation. In it, the workshop’s facilitator and Save the Children Sweden’s children's participation adviser for South East Asia and the Pacific, describes and explains the training activities used in the workshop, and outlines several more.

Adults First! is aimed at staff and managers of child-focused organisations hoping to improve their work with children. People thinking of facilitating such trainings should also find it a rich source of ideas and exercises to use with adults and young people.

Beers, Henk van and Caspar Trimmer: Adults First! An organisational training for adults on children's participation. Child Rights Foundation Cambodia, 2004 and Save the Children Sweden, SEAP region, Bangkok, 2006. ISBN 974-94170-9-7