This seminar critically reflects on the praxis of children’s participation in a five-year programme tackling the worst forms of child labour in Nepal and Bangladesh. Posed as a conversation between theory and practice, the speakers share what they had to learn (and unlearn) to work effectively with children.
Watch now
The CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) programme was a five-year, action research consortium generating evidence-informed, innovative solutions by children to avoid hazardous, exploitative labour in Bangladesh and Nepal. The programme had a participatory and child-centred approach that supported children to gather evidence, analyse it themselves and generate solutions to the problems they identify.
Yet definitions of child-centredness often don’t reflect the messy negotiations of children’s participation in practice – where facilitators must balance children’s interest, resources, safeguarding and funder priorities.
The Rejuvenate project’s recent working paper: ‘Participation For, With, and By Girls: Evidencing Impact’ suggests that while substantive participation may not always be appropriate (because of, for example, budget, or time, or ethical concerns), where possible, engaging girls fully in design, implementation, and evaluation, can significantly augment the value of each of these stages of a programme – particularly contributing to: increased complexity and nuance in metrics; accounting for negative externalities of participation; more contextually aware and tailored programming; and greater attention to intersectional marginalities.
The evaluation of children’s action research groups in the CLARISSA programme underscored the significance of trust in the running and success of these groups and the essential role of participatory facilitators in trust-building.
In this seminar we reflect critically on the praxis of a child-led approach – looking at it’s affordances and challenges — through a conversation between the CLARISSA and REJUEVANTE projects. Two of CLARISSA’s participatory facilitators, Kriti Bhattarai and Sayma Sayed, and a member of the programme evaluation team, Mieke Snijder, share responses to questions such as:
- What did the practice of children’s participation look and feel like in the CLARISSA programme? How was this different from what was planned/imagined?
- What have you learnt about being child-centred through the five years of the CLARISSA programme?
- What skills did you need to develop and strengthen to work with children?
- Which of your previous practices did you need to unlearn?
Speakers
- Kriti Bhattarai, Senior Program Manager, Voice of Children, Nepal
- Sayma Sayed, Director (Operations Monitoring & Research) at Grambangla Unnayan Committee, Dhaka
- Mieke Snijder, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies
Chair
Mariah Cannon, Institute of Development Studies
How to watch
You can watch this on Zoom.
Key contacts
