Creating an Enabling Environment: Capacity Building in Children’s Participation

This book gives an account of how Save the Children Sweden and partners in Viet Nam went about assessing their work on building the capacity of adults to create an enabling environment for the participation of children. From the document summary:"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."

In short, this reprot explains rights-based research methodology and processes; a history of the concept of children's participation and the project history; experiences of Save The Children's rights-based programming in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific region, with a focus on Viet Nam; respondents' learning on participation; assessment of the enabling environment; and conclusions and recommendations. The research aim was to measure the progress towards the objective: "To stimulate a process among our partners towards the general perception of children as social actors whose opinions make a difference in research, when doing situation analyses and in the planning process."

Accompanied by the signing of informed consent records for respondents and confidentiality statements for researchers and translators, rights-based research strategies include:

• Participation must be voluntary; individual consent/dissent to taking part and use of specific research tools must be sought by researchers;
• Adequate information must be provided when seeking informed consent;
• Confidentiality must be maintained;
• Children must not be put at risk;
• Any other benefits received by children (especially in the Child Friendly Districts) must not be affected;
• Feedback on results must be provided to children;
• Children’s contributions, including authorship, must be acknowledged;
• Children’s opinions must be respected and appreciated;
• Researchers must not impose their research or views on respondents;
• Equal opportunities should be created for children to take part.

Respondents ranged from functionaries in government and non-governmental organisations to residents of neighbourhoods, including
children who benefited from the projects and those who did not, as well as adults who were directly involved and those who were not.". According to the document's conclusions:

1. Individual lifetime learning about children’s capacities and rights is an important area through which awareness of children's participation can be raised; and, as the beginning of that learning continuum,  early childhood development programming might be a crucial point of entry for capacity building at local levels
2. Understanding of the rights to have an opinion heard appeared to need continuous reinforcing, particularly among facilitators working with children.
3. Capacity building among adults, particularly within government structures on listening, hearing, and acting upon what children say appeared to be needed as children began to gain confidence by "speaking up."
4. Including children in management of organisations working on children's participation is a way to build capacity and progress beyond the superficial "correct" responses and unrealistic goals without actual participation, while international programmatic support - in particular, "toolkits" with only rhetoric - were not deemed useful.
5. Rooting "participation" in human rights rather than needs was deemed strategically important, as was shared adult-child participation rather than creating children's activities for child participation.

Communication-centred recommendations include the following: create adult and child training and training manuals, develop "sophisticated/appropriate" communication systems for distribution of information, increasingly integrate children in adult decision-making bodies with full media coverage of participation, promote linkages and networks of Child Friendly Districts and schools, develop materials that clarify, in local terms, the global debates, establish collaboration with other agencies and government counterparts to develop standards for the preparation and protection of children who participate in meetings outside their local communities, train chaperones and translators who accompany them, establish clear standards for adult behaviour and responsibilities with respect to children's participation, and establish a child-friendly complaint procedure.