Based on experiences from Egypt this paper examines the role of PRA in enabling and encouraging effective participation, particularly among the poor and disadvantaged.
This book presents issues and challenges facing those facilitating children's and young people's participation. The contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds including NGOs in development, children's agencies, academic insitutions and governments and provide case studies from the UK, Eastern Europe, asia, Africa, the Carribean and central and north America. Chapter 1 gives and overview to the main issues and concepts and chapters 2-7 each expand on a particular theme. The main issues discussed and analysed include: the ethical dilemmas facing professionals, the process and methods used in partlicipatory research and planning with children, the inter-relationship between culture and children's participation, considerations for instiutions and the key qualities of a participation programme.
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This book focuses on civil society's role in international policy debates and global problem solving. Increased citizen action over the last 10 years has enabled citizens groups to be a major force in nonstate participation in the global system. Against this background, case studies from a number of movements and NGO networks are presented, including: campaigns to reform the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; the Jubilee 2000 Campaign, the movement against Free Trade, the Landmine Campaign as well as several other human rights, social justice and environmental movements. The book finishes with a section on lessons learned and challenges for the future. A synopsis of the book and abstracts of each section can be viewed at http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/particip/research/citizen/globcitact.pdf
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.
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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
This practical guide published by Save the Children is aimed at all organisations that are looking for ways to consult with children and young people. It can be used for drawing up a consultation strategy: there are checklists and question and answer sections as well as examples of good practice in reference to the British Charter Mark criteria. The manual looks at
- Why children should be consulted?
- The principles and practice of consultation, which includes levels of service impact on children and young people, child protection, first steps and planning checklists.
- Charter Mark criteria for consulting with children and young people: indicators and examples of good practice
- A selection of methods for consulting children and young people, including activities for children and young people
In finishes with details of the Children Charter Mark Award, a summary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and "useful organisations" and "resources" lists.
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This article looks at the issues of cost and sustainability of one of Save the Children's principle interventions in Morocco: the establishment and support of a major residential institution for physically disabled children. The issues that emerged concerned representation of disabled people, a 'hierarchy' of acceptance relating to disabled people within disabled people's organisations themselves, and the limited timeframe to carry out the research than had originally been planned in order to establish trust with people.|The findings were that the expenses spent on the facility could have been extended to a much wider net of beneficiaries if more community based programmes had been developed. This led to much criticism by officials and project participants. However, no easy solutions emerged to address difficulties in the project, given the complexities involved in discrimination against disabled people.
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GROW is an indigenous NGO operating in the Mokhotlong district of Lesotho. The focus of their programmes have shifted in recent years to address the issue surrounding HIV/AIDS. This article presents a participatory, community-based approach to possible strategies of alleviating the burdens faced by orphaned children. Members of the GROW health and nutrition team initially met with 27 people identified as caregivers of orphaned children to discuss needs and possible solutions. The article looks at how a support network was developed and how this empowered both the children and the communities in the challenges they faced.
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The recent 'rise of rights' has sparked much critical reflection, one of the key concerns being 'What is different this time'?. Can this emerging focus on rights within development help bring about favourable changes for poor and marginalised people?
This issue of the IDS Bulletin addresses diverse perspectives and questions across a spectrum of current thinking, policy and practice. Why the rights-based approach and why now? Whose rights count? 'Rights' work has evolved from an historical focus on human rights violations and concern for legal protection, but its future depends on direct engagement with civil society causes.
Development needs rights as much as rights need development. Illustrated here are struggles for rights within specific contexts (tenants associations in Kenya; children's organisations in India): the perspective of marginalised groups alters how formal rights are given meaning. Using rights in practice is challenging and filled with contradictions and tensions. The struggle for rights is happening and it is not simply an agenda of the powerful.
What emerges from this IDS Bulletin is a vibrant picture of often diverse meanings and strategies pursued throughout the world. If the current enthusiasm for rights in development can open thinking spaces and result in appropriate action, rather than serving as a one-size-fits-all export, then rights bases approaches are to be welcomed. Moving beyond old debates and recognising that rights must be claimed and realised by real people, the development community can discover what rights will ultimately mean in context and practice.
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