Children's participation in events with adults

Publication:

Patricia del Pilar Horna Castro

Easier to say than to do. Children’s participation in events with adults.

2007, Lima: Save the Children Sweden Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. ISBN 978-9972-696-50-3

This is a recent English translation of the Spanish original.

This is one of many downloadable publications by Save the Children Sweden in Latin America. They have an excellent, regularly updated, website with information in Spanish, English and Portuguese. I will post more information from this website shortly.

From the introduction to this book:

“Children’s participation is, without any doubt, a key issue in our societies. There is plenty and varied literature regarding children’s participation. The civil society and the States are now facing this global challenge. This guide, developed by Patricia Horna, is useful in many ways: it simultaneously introduces profound considerations, mandatory theoretical background, and above all, a friendly way to enhance the relationships between adults and children when they participate in the same activities.”

(Alejandro Cussianovich, p.7)

The book provides a review on the different approaches, conceptions and myths on children and adult participation in training workshops, seminars, discussion roundtables, etc.

“It is addressed to adults who have understood that they cannot speak about what children feel or think without considering and incorporating their very voices. And, of course, it will also be useful for children to keep watch so conditions in these events meet the conditions for a “real and effective” participation, just as they have demanded.

This material wants to contribute precisely to what many adults frequently hear, read, and say: children have a right to express themselves freely in every aspect which affects them —in other words, they have a right to participate.”

……….

“….the book is divided in three chapters which are, at the same time, the three big steps we are proposing to follow. The first one displays the current approaches and ideas on children’s participation; the second refers to the myths around children’s participation in events with adults, and the third chapter provides guidelines, ideas and suggestions which will render conditions for an effective and active participation.”

(p.11)

Geographical Information Systems use in research with children

An exciting project is ongoing in Finland where researchers use GIS in a very interactive, creative and fun way to do research with children on the quality of their living environment. Children can identify their own neighbourhood, their own houses and schools and indicate things such as how they spend their free time, what they consider to be safe or dangerous places, and how they make use of and perceive their environment. They can also answer questions in relation to their wellbeing.

See and try it out here!

For more information visit SoftGIS in Finland, or get in touch with the leading researcher:

Marketta Kytta
Centre for urban and regional studies
Helsinki University of Technology
marketta.kytta@tkk.fi

For the academically inclined, view her dissertation "Children in Outdoor Contexts - Affordances and Independent Mobility in the Assessment of Environmental Child Friendliness"

Children's involvement in local budgeting

Publication:
Children and young people in action, participating in budget work
Editors: Margarida Maria Marques, Neiara de Morais Bezerra, Renato Roseno de Oliveira,Talita de Araujo Maciel. The Ceará Centre for Protection of Children and Adolescents – CEDECA-Ceará, Brazil, November 2005. ISBN: 0-620-35519-0.

This document describes the process of the involvement of a group of young people in the monitoring of the public budget of Fortaleza, in Brazil.

In 1999 CEDECA-CEARÁ initiated its programme of monitoring the Fortaleza city budget. This was done from the understanding that the struggle for the human rights of children and young people has to be conducted through the discussion of public policies that give effect to these rights, by knowing about the allocation of public resources to implement those policies and through social control in the allocation and spending of public resources.

Brazilian society has managed, through a process of broad social mobilisation, to have written into the 1988 Federal Constitution that children and young people have rights and that these need to be fully protected as a matter of absolute priority. Further, the Children and Adolescents Act (ECA) stipulates that meeting this priority envisages children having first call on public resources. Unfortunately, the democratic culture of the country does not fully recognise the rights of children and young people nor does it allow for the exercising of social control of public budgets.

Therefore, taking as a main objective the promotion of social control of policies and public budgets, the programme uses three complementary strategies: the empowerment of organised groups within civil society; the provision of technical subsidies for intervention in the drafting and implementation of budgetary legislation; and support during active mobilization and lobbying for the development of public policies for children and young people.

During the first three years, our principal partners were NGOs, forums and networks for the protection of the rights of children and young people. These were important partnerships, as the most significant networking among children’s rights organizations today includes a focus on budgetary issues in the city and in the State of Ceará. One example is the case of the DCA-Ceará Forum (a Forum of Non-governmental Organisations for the Protection of Children and Young People), which took the matter of budget allocations directly to the State, the Commission for the Protection of the Right to Education and the Forum Against Sexual Violence of Children and Adolescents.

Nevertheless, the perception that there were organised groups of young people in our city, discussing rights and public policies, but that they were absent from the decision-making processes on these same policies, led us to reconsider our project. Why had these groups not yet achieved the right to be heard? This question and the meeting with our partner, Save the Children Sweden, for whom direct participation is a fundamental principle of work focusing on rights, led us to the conviction that one cannot speak of democracy while excluding such a significant group within the population, even more so when the subject is precisely the policies targeting that very group. The story told here is that of the first experience of empowering and supporting groups of young people to intervene in the public budgeting process. In this narrative we describe the phases of that empowerment as well as the involvement of these young people in pressure groups for the development of budgetary legislation.

We are not dealing with a methodology created by or exclusive to CEDECA-Ceará, but rather formulated during the first year of the project with the active participation of the young people involved. The approach was adapted to daily events and the reality in which we found ourselves, taking into account the diversity of the young people, with the CEDECA team not only filling the role of educator, but also that of apprentice. Daily practices were revised and adjusted to respond to the problems and difficulties that we confronted during the project.

If certain doubts remained regarding the relevance of a project to align the public budget with the promotion of the right to participation, these doubts have been replaced by the certainty that participation is something quite necessary, not only for the young people, but also for the city.

For CEDECA-Ceará, promoting the exercise of the right to participate is about more than protecting that right; it is also a strategy to strengthen the protection of all the human rights of children and young people.

As posted on IDASA website. IDASA, in South Africa, has a children's budget unit, more about that later.

Hard copies can be ordered at:
Save the Children Sweden
Regional Office for Southern Africa
PO Box 13993
Hatfi eld, 0028
Tel: +27 (0)12 342 0222
Fax: +27 (0)12 342 0305
E-mail: postmaster@za.rb.se
Web: http://www.rb.se

Useful link: Magic

About MAGIC

Magic has a lot of information in relation to childrens' rights and the media and provides useful resources and links. I especially like their collaboration with oneminutevideo junior . (Recently, however, it has been difficult to access this website - let us hope it is only temporarily).

In 1996 the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which advises governments on their implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child held a consultation on children and the media.

A working group then began to explore the issues involved in developing a positive relationship between children and the media. In 1998, the Norwegian Government and UNICEF initiated a process that would identify examples of good practice, forge cooperative links among the many sectors involved, and produce resources to encourage further developments in the field.

In November 1999, young people involved in media projects, media professionals and child rights experts gathered in the Norwegian capital Oslo to discuss the role the media can play in the development of children's rights throughout the world, under five headings:

• Children's right of access to the media, including new media

• Children's right to media education and literacy

• Children's right to participate in the media

• Children's right to protection from harm in the media and violence on the screen

• The media's role in protecting and promoting children's rights

From their deliberations emerged the Oslo Challenge.

The Oslo Challenge Network was set up for professionals and organizations working in the field of children and the media to share information and ideas. This network - now known as the MAGIC Network - communicates through an email group. If you would like to join this group, just go to the Join MAGIC section of this website.

Children's participation in Latin America

The CYE Journal has just published a new issue (vol. 17, no. 2), which includes 11 new papers on participation with youth in Latin America, guest edited by Yolanda Corona Caraveo and Mara Eugenia Linares Ponton as well as essays on children and nature by Peter Kahn and Emily Stanley, and several book reviews.

The issue includes papers from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, and other countries in Latin America. It is available from the journal's home page on: http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/

Recognising children as social agents

Researching Children’s Morality: developing research methods that allow children’s involvement in discourses relevant to their everyday lives.
by Sam Frankel, in: Childhoods Today Online Journal, Volume 1 Issue 1 - July 2007

The article describes how young children can be involved in research as long as research methods are relevant to the children's own context and understanding. Among other methods, the author details how he developed a questionnaire by combining it with an audio recording that not only captured interest of the children but also resulted in accurate processing and a high response to the questions. The research makes a case to see children as social agents, "who draw and develop meaning based on their own social experiences. Without this move to engage children in the context of the social world they inhabit, policy and practice will remain based on generalisations, clouded by adult perceptions of childhood (Mayall, 2002; Oakley, 1994)." (p.21)

From the journal:

Abstract: Contemporary children’s childhoods are full of discourses about children and right and wrong. However, the foundation for these moral debates is often based on adult assumptions about children rather than reliable knowledge obtained from them. This article therefore seeks to explore ways in which children can be involved in the research process, such that their voices can be heard. Through looking at a number of creative research it argues that children can be competent and legitimate research partners within moral discourses, providing data that can inform more effective policy and practice.

(p.1)

The research

".... looked at the way in which children experience morality within their everyday lives and endeavours to explore ways in which children as social agents can be legitimate and competent partners in a quest for understanding. Such work can then be used as a foundation for policy makers to move away from a reliance on adult assumptions, allowing them to draw on reliable knowledge of children’s childhoods."

(p.2)

Children's participation in China

From Performance to Practice: Changing the Meaning of Child Participation in China by Andy West, Chen Xue Mei, Zhou Ye, Zhang Chun Na, Chen Qiang, in Children, Youth and Environments 17(1): 14-32.

Andy West and his colleagues have written an excellent article that gives a good insight in the concept and practice of children's participation in modern China.

The article discusses some recent developments in children’s participation in China, indicating a shift is taking place in the meaning of the term “participation,” away from the traditional idea of participation as performance, which fits with school and other childhood cultures, toward taking children more seriously.

The authors describe how children's participation has been advocated in the social, cultural and political context of China focusing on how it can be done and how it can make a difference in research and working with children.

“However, arguing for children’s participation as a right is probably neither the only nor the best strategy: there must also be some demonstration of what participation is and how it can be achieved.”

…………..

“Training alone has not been successful in changing the notion of participation from one of performance and activities to acceptance of true participation as a right. Recognition of practical, useful forms of participation by adults in positions of authority was a necessary starting point. These forms include children being consulted and involved in decisions on matters to do with community, school management, and where children live. The institutionalization of such participation requires changing adult practice and attitudes.
This need to develop practical participation work still requires basic training and understanding. However, the need to show how participation can be done must also avoid the trap of providing ready-made recipes.” (p.9)

The article also accounts of what is “probably the first child- and youth-operated organization in China:” called “Springbud Service Station for Disabled Children and Young People,” founded in 2004 and registered in 2005.