Child and youth participation resource guide

Basics of child and youth participation

Concepts

Black, Maggie, Opening Minds, Opening Opportunities: Children’s participation in action for working children, Save the Children, London, 2003.
This case study research was commissioned by the Save the Children Alliance Task Group on Children and Work to review the impact and lessons learned from working children’s participation in Bangladesh, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, India and Senegal. It illustrates a range of existing participatory initiatives with working children, analyses the impact of participation on their lives and provides recommendations for improving inclusive interventions with working children.

Commonwealth Secretariat, London, 2005.
One: Participation in the Second Decade of Life: What and Why?
Two: Adolescent and Youth Participation: Adults Get Ready!
Developed in collaboration with UNICEF’s Adolescent Development and Participation Unit, New York, these booklets are part of a set of four how-to guides on promoting meaningful adolescent participation in decision making. Together the booklets provide a comprehensive framework for participation that can be adapted for various social and cultural environments. The first booklet helps explain what participation is and why it is important to involve young people in decisionmaking processes. The second booklet addresses the roles adults can play in creating an environment, which enables meaningful youth participation.
Email: cyp@commonwealth.int

Cussianovich, Alejandro and Maria A. Marquez, Towards a Protagonist Participation of Boys, Girls and Teenagers, Save the Children Regional Office Sweden, Lima, 2002.
This book is written by one of the leading children’s participation activists in Latin America and deals with prevailing visions and notions of working children’s participation among adults, institutions and children. It examines the existing practices and discusses opportunities for creating new avenues for constructive protagonist participation of boys and girls.

Flekkøy G. Malfrid and Natalie H. Kaufman, The Participation Rights of the Child: Rights and responsibilities in family and society. Children in Charge Series 4, Jessica Kingsley Publishers ISBN 1-8 5302-490-2 pb, 1997.
This fourth volume in the Children in Charge Series analyses the participation rights of children in a comprehensive and accessible way. It considers different cultural contexts for children’s participation and takes the evolving capacities of the child into account in the participation discourse.

Francisco, Carolina, Standing Up for Ourselves! A study on the concepts and practices of young people’s rights to participation, ECPAT International, Manila, 1999.
This book discusses the capacity of and spaces for children to participate in projects and programmes, drawing on the principles of the CRC. It focuses particularly on children’s participation in efforts against the commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth.

Franklin, Bob (ed.), The New Handbook of Children’s Rights, Routledge, ISBN 04152 50358, London, 2005.
This handbook covers the debate concerning children’s rights and development over the past 20 years. It also discusses the impact of recent British legislation on children in the areas of health, education and protection.

Hart, Roger A., Children’s Participation: The theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care, Earthscan, ISBN 1853833223, London, 1997.
This manual focuses on conceptual issues, processes and methods of involving children in community development projects. It includes case studies from diverse cultures and social classes to demonstrate a range of useful and effective techniques to facilitate children’s participation in projects.

Hodgkin, Rachel and Peter Newell, Implementation Handbook for the Convention of the Child: Fully revised edition, UNICEF, ISBN 92-806-3782-2, New York, 2002.
A practical tool for those involved in promoting children’s rights. The handbook detailed information and guidance on every article of the CRC. This book is an operationalizing children’s participation rights.

Johnson, Victoria, Edda Ivan-Smith, Gill Gordon, et al. (eds.), Stepping Forward: Children and young people’s participation in the development process, Intermediate Technology Publications, London, 1998.
This publication is based on an international workshop on children’s participation in 1997. Drawing on case studies from various countries, it covers issues, such as the ethical dilemmas in addressing children’s participation, the process and methods of participatory research and planning with children, culture and children’s participation, institutional considerations and capacity building for children’s participation.

Lansdown, Gerison, Promoting Children’s Participation in Democratic Decision Making, UNICEF International Child Development Centre (now Innocenti Research Centre), ISBN 88-854-0173-2, Florence, 2001.
This publication builds on research and experiences on children’s participation and makes the case for increased commitment to respecting children’s rights. It highlights the need to consolidate and learn from existing practices. It also provides practical guidance on working with children as partners and a checklist for children’s participation in international conferences.

Miljeteig, Per, Creating Partnerships with Working Children and Youth, World Bank, Washington D.C., 2000.
From a child-rights perspective, this paper investigates the characteristics and impacts of working children and youth organizing themselves, evaluates the principles of creating partnerships and overcoming barriers to working children’s participation in decision making.

Miller, Judy, Never Too Young: How young people can take responsibility and make decisions, Save the Children, UK, ISBN 184 187 077, London, 2003.
This handbook focuses on younger children and describes how they can take responsibility and make decisions.

The National Youth Agency, Involving Children and Young People: An introduction, The National Youth Agency, Leicester, 2005.
This document gives a concise overview of children’s participation and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches of involving young people.

NSW Commission for Children and Young People, ‘Research and resources on children’s participation’, in Taking Participation Seriously, New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, Australia.
The Research and Resources on Participation toolkit analyses selected models of participation from Roger Hart’s Ladder of Participation to Harry Shier’s Pathways to Participation. It also includes useful research and resources on children’s participation in general. This is part of a six-part resource toolkit called Taking Participation Seriously, a resource for organizations that want practical advice about how to involve children and young people in activities, events and decision making about
issues that affect their lives. Children and young people helped develop the kits.

Petren, Alfhild and James Himes (eds.), Children’s Rights: Turning principles into practice, Save the Children Sweden and UNICEF ROSA, Kathmandu, 2000.
This book is a collection of essays on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and how its principles and provisions can be turned into effective programmes. Various case studies and practical experiences are included.

Rajani, Rakesh, The Participation Rights of Adolescents: A strategic approach, UNICEF, New York, 2001.
This is a resource for policy makers, programmers, advocates and activists interested in promoting the meaningful participation of young people at the global, country and community levels. The author argues that a development approach that emphasizes investing in young people’s assets and protective factors is more effective than focusing only on fixing young people’s problems.

Rajani, Rakesh (ed.), The Political Participation of Children, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MA, 2000.
This is a collection of articles on the foundations, experiences and challenges of children’s political participation.
Email: cpds@hsph.harvard.edu

Reddy, Nandana and Kavita Ratna, A Journey in Children’s Participation, Concerned for Working Children (CWC), Bangalore, India, 2002.
This document covers more than 20 years of CWC’s experience with children’s participation and turns these into principles and tools that help further the knowledge and practice of children’s participation.

Shier, Harry, ‘Pathways to Participation: Openings, opportunities and obligations’, in Children and Society, Volume 15, Number 2, 2001, pp 107-117.
This paper offers a model of five levels of participation where children are listened to, children are supported in expressing their views, children’s views are taken into account, children are involved in decision-making processes and children share power and responsibility for decision making. The model identifies three stages of commitments at each level: openings, opportunities and obligations. This benchmarking tool is useful for planning and assessing children’s participation.

Theis, Joachim, Promoting Rights-Based Approaches: Experiences and ideas from Asia and the Pacific, Save the Children Sweden, ISBN 974-91891-3-2, Bangkok, 2004.
This books draws largely on Save the Children’s experiences with rights-based approaches in East and South-East Asia. It provides an introduction to the concepts and approaches of rights-based programming and discusses tools for analysis, planning, monitoring and evaluation. It also demonstrates the fundamental importance of participation in the context of human rights. The book lists organizations and web-based resources on child rights programming and participation.

Theis, Joachim, ‘Defining Child and Youth Participation’, UNICEF EAPRO, Bangkok, 2005.
This paper provides an analysis of children’s participation and includes sections on child protection, civil and political rights, and on the economic and political participation of children. It also looks at the various spaces for children’s participation and discusses common misconceptions regarding children’s participation.
Email: eapro@unicef.org

Treseder, Phil, Empowering Children and Young People. Training Manual: Promoting involvement in decision making, Children’s Rights Office and Save the Children, London, 1997.
This manual contains checklists and exercises for promoting conceptual clarity on children’s participation among professionals involved in training young people to be active in decision-making processes by building their confidence and skills.

UNICEF, State of the World’s Children 2003, Issue on Participation, UNICEF, New York, 2002.
This report builds on children’s experiences at the UN Special Session on Children, focuses on the importance of children’s participation and argues that participation is the right of every child at every age. The report presents examples from around the world on the benefits of children’s participation.

Zhu, Zeng, Yang Haiyu, Andy West (eds.), Child Participation in Action: Concepts and practice from East and West – proceedings, papers and plans from the International Seminar on Child Participation in Action, Save the Children UK, China Programme and All China Women’s Federation Child Work Department, Beijing, 2004.
This report provides an overview of children’s participation in China. It includes conceptual chapters by international specialists, practical experiences with children’s participation and the background and outcome documents from the seminar.
Email: beijingoffice@scuk.org.cn