Resources

This anthology provides insights, dilemmas and approaches from the practice of development assistance, based on the experiences of USAID. The practical meanings of participation are explored in contexts ranging from economic reform and environmental planning to conflict resolution and humanitarian assistance. The book is split into three broad sections: À Participation as an End - considers ways in which development assistance can broaden peoples access to economic opportunity and to their society's decision making processes À Participation as a Means - describes some participatory approaches used in development programmes. They single out two key features: listening more broadly and forming genuine partnerships À In part three the focus is on issues and insights about "fixing the system" to facilitate the fuller engagement of development partners and greater flexibility, transparency, and responsiveness to the end user. The papers selected reflect some of the innovations, issues and candidly expressed concerns that have marked the agencies reforms. Finally a conference paper prepared by USAID staff in late 1998 outlines the Agency's organisational change process so far and distills seven lessons learned enroute.

The editorial of this special issue on Children's Participation: evaluating effectiveness discusses the focus of the issue and gives details of the guest editor.

This article begins by reviewing some of the general issues surrounding the evaluation of participation that emerged from a symposium on Children's Participation in Community Settings held in Norway in June 2000. It then examines opportunities and constraints shaping children's participation, what channels are being created for children to participate in their communities and what form these opportunities usually take. It finishes by reviewing areas of agreement among the symposium members, on qualities that characterise good settings for participation and how evaluation research should be conceptualised.

Local environments are socially and developmentally important domains in children's everyday experiences. Yet so often young people's views and experiences of neighbourhood settings are characterised by conflict with adults, alienation from community life, environmental hazards or neglect and limited opportunities. The ideas presented in this paper are based on the authors' work with children in neighbourhoods in the UK and Australia as part of the æGrowing Up in Cities project. The authors argue that authentic participation involves inclusion - where the system changes to accommodate the participation and values of children, rather than integration where children participate in predefined ways in predefined structures.|The article gives a detailed description of a youth project in suburban Melbourne, including a list of the project's accomplishments and a discussion of the impact of participation on professionals, children and neighbourhoods and the ways in which communities can move towards genuine participation for young people

This article describes the Zimiseleni project that works with 'hard-to-reach' boys in an urban settlement of Johannesburg, South Africa called Kathorus. The Zimiseleni group is made up of 15 boys who have been referred to the Ekupholeni Mental Health Centre because of behavioural problems. All the boys live in extreme poverty, most are involved in crime ranging from petty activities to rape and gang involvement. Some are involved in substance abuse.The 15 boys were asked to take photographs that illustrated the 'lives of boys in Kathorus' as part of a research project that the organisers' hoped would also develop into a therapeutic intervention. The authors give an accessible account of the project and the ways in which it fulfilled and failed to fulfil its aims.

This paper presents a range of initiatives the authors are involved in within the field of children's rights and participation. It begins by defining the rights based approach and needs based approach to development and goes on to give details of three projects. The first project is PLAN International Indonesia's training and capacity strengthening for its field staff aimed at promoting a shift towards addressing child rights in its programmes and projects. The paper outlines the tangible benefits for the children and the impact on their lives, for example in family relationships.|The second project is a DFID Innovations Fund research one looking at the ways in which the impacts of development projects on children are addressed in monitoring and evaluation systems, with pilot projects in Nepal and South Africa. It discusses the use of organisational mapping in both these pilot projects and the findings to come out of them|The final case study is about the monitoring and evaluation of the Saying Power Scheme in the UK. Rather than happening at the end of the projects, the monitoring and evaluation process runs parallel to it. The article describes the confidence lines and ôHö method used and concludes with challenges the projects faced