Participatory Approaches Using Creative Methods to Strengthen Community Engagement and Ownership: Resource Pack

"Creative methods can help communities identify, reflect deeply and communicate issues from local cultural knowledge, perspectives and beliefs, which deepens community engagement and helps start a journey towards greater community ownership."

Communities play significant roles in preventing and responding to the concerns children face. Community-level approaches to child protection look collectively for ways to support community members to ensure children's rights to healthy development. This resource pack is designed for child protection field staff working in both development and humanitarian contexts who are engaging in community-level work and seeking to grow their skills in participatory facilitation using creative methods. The result of a collaboration between Save the Children and War Child, it builds on the belief that creativity and the use of creative methods offer a powerful way to engage communities more deeply and build stronger community ownership.

The resource pack identifies and describes the following competencies required of a facilitator seeking deep community processes and engagement: humility and respect; empathy; deep listening; ability to ask probing questions; commitment to understanding power dynamics in the community; nonviolent conflict management; ability to enable inclusive dialogue; and awareness of one's own assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes, etc. when engaging with a community and developing a reflective practice.

The complete pack includes the following parts:

1. An Introduction [PDF] that clarifies the background, purpose, intended readership, and content of the resource pack.
2. A Guidance Note [PDF] that defines relevant key terms and concepts in community-level child protection, outlines the different creative disciplines and methods central to this resource pack, and explains the power of using a participatory approach drawing on creative methods to enable community engagement and ownership on child protection.
3. A Toolkit [PDF] that offers guidance on the use of participatory approaches through creative disciplines such as performing arts, visual arts, information and communication technology (ICT), and media.
4. A Two-Day Training [PDF] that uses a "learning by doing" approach to strengthen participants' skills in participatory facilitation using creative methods.
5. A Literature Review [PDF] of published and grey literature that Save the Children and War Child Holland carried out to establish the state of the evidence in relation to the impact and effectiveness of participatory approaches using creative methods to ensure community engagement and ownership. Resources, obtained through a call for evidence (published research, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) reports, or other) and a desk review, were drawn from a range of sectors, including health, human rights, child rights, child protection, and peacebuilding. The key findings informed the development of this resource pack.

As noted here, while participatory approaches using creative methods can be a powerful way to enable deep engagement of communities in child protection, it is important to realise:

• The use of participatory approaches and creative methods are not a "quick fix" or an automatic guarantee of community engagement and ownership. Results and outcomes for children will depend on the underlying holistic approach of the project and which actors - the external agency or community - hold the power.
• Not every context is suitable for deep community processes and engagement. However, even in these settings (e.g., some humanitarian settings), a participatory approach and the use of creative methods can help a project deepen community engagement and set interventions on a path to greater community ownership.
• There might be contexts where the use of certain creative methods is not appropriate - e.g., making radio broadcasts or using photography or film may be prohibited or invite suspicion, putting participants at risk. There might also be contexts where certain methods such as theatre or music are considered culturally inappropriate or will ultimately exclude certain populations. In these situations, it is most appropriate to prioritise creative methods that are commonly used in the context.
• Field staff should never pressure children or adults into taking part in participatory processes and should be guided in their work by those who know the local context well.