Opening Minds, Opening Up Opportunities

Published by the International Save the Children Alliance in March 2004, this 37-page report was written to capture Save the Children's experience with working children, and draw from it principles of good practice.

From the Executive Summary

Projects for working children have been in the front line of Save the Children initiatives to help children fulfil their right to participation. To capture this experience, and draw from it principles of good practice, the International Save the Children Alliance commissioned case study research in Bangladesh, Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, India and Senegal. Of the seven projects studied, four were small in scale and tightly focused on particular groups of working children, two were large-scale programmes directly engaging thousands of working children, and one set out to introduce child participation into macrolevel planning and policy implementation. This report presents the findings from that research.

The Participation of Working Children

"The research found that working children's participation involves a wide range of activities, including:

• consultation with working children through, for example, participatory research on their working lives and asking them about the types of service interventions they feel they would gain from;
• children's involvement in establishing and managing their own groups andorganisations;
• children's advocacy activities, developing and delivering messages about work and other issues to key decision-makers."

The Impact of Children's Participation

The research found that working children's participation has a very positive impact, including benefits for:

• child workers, raising their confidence, improving their skills and abilities, and enabling them to operate on their own behalf or with adults to improve their situation;
• families and communities, in terms of improved social relationships andresponsible action by children on the community's behalf;
• organisations undertaking child participation, in terms of motivating staff and leading to projects that are better grounded the realities of working children's lives and which are more likely to achieve planned outcomes;
• policy-makers with whom child workers come into contact, in terms ofopening up debates and changing attitudes towards children's work.

Towards Good Practice in the Participation of Working Children

The study found that in order for child participation to be carried out sensitively, effectively and supportively, these ten principles must be followed.

1. Child participation should be mainstreamed in the design and implementation of all actions to improve working children's lives.
2. Implementing organisations need to be committed to child rights, open-minded and flexible.
3. Wherever children are involved in consultation and other participation activities, the principles of transparency and accountability should be respected.
4. An appropriate balance of adult and child responsibilities should be sought in the implementation of child participation.
5. Advocacy on behalf of working children should include substantive contributions from the children concerned.
6. Since most child workers come from disadvantaged groups and are vulnerable to discrimination and abuse, their rights to protection should be given specialconsideration.
7. Within programmes for working children, children should be provided with the space to meet together, undertake their own activities, and develop their own plans and perspectives.
8. The principle of non-discrimination should be upheld in child participationactivities, which should aim for maximum appropriate inclusion of all eligibleparticipants.
9. The purpose of child participation should be explained to parents, teachers and other adults with influence in children's working and non-working lives, so that their understanding and support is assured.
10. The sustainability of child participation activities should be addressed at an early stage.

The study concludes that the opening up of the debate about their lives to include working children themselves will, in time, bring new perspectives to bear on their many situations. This has already occurred where child workers have been given the chance to capture attention for their points of view. But the voices of those in hidden occupations, deprived of any opportunity for self-expression and treated as silent captives without anything tosay, have in the vast majority of cases yet to be heard. When this situation is rectified, their voices and actions may shed new light on areas of debate that remain unresolved among policy-makers today.

Click here to download the report in PDF format. French and Spanish translations are also available.