Guidelines for Monitoring Child Participation & Protection Activities

Child participation has been defined as a process of listening to the child, taking him/her seriously and turning his/her ideas and suggestions into reality. This author strongly believes that children should have the right to participate in decision making, especially over policies that affect their health, wellbeing and development. But this opportunity often eludes the children because they are denied the right of fair hearing and fair participation. This is because the rights as contained in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child are seen as mere ceremonial provisions by African member countries.

The objectives of this review therefore are among others, to do the following:

To act as a reminder to individuals, organizations and governments that these rights actually exist and need to be respected, to act as a reference resources for organisations(both government and non-government), and to ensure self-assessment with compliance.

Children for this purpose are defined as persons between the ages of 5-17yrs.  Children’s rights can be protected through so many ways including; by involving children in any activity concerning them. Involvement means ensuring that they are present at the venue of the event and that they actively contribute to the proceedings, and also by giving them the right of fair hearing in any activity concerning them.

Child Participation must exclude Child “manipulation”, Child “decoration” and Child “Tokenism.”  During child

 participation, staff and volunteers should be properly trained to work with children, adults should ensure a safe and child-friendly atmosphere, venues should be clean, with healthy snacks or meals, children should be separated by age groups, and in the event that a child becomes injured, extremely upset or reveals information that requires follow-up support, the organizers must have the proper resource-contracts at hand.

When children feel they are taken seriously and their opinions respected by others; they gain more control over their lives and they develop hope for their future. In order to make participation simple, provide as much information and explanation as the child needs, use a range of ways to provide information; using simple language or graphics and give plenty of notice of meetings to everyone involved.

The major challenge facing any child participation program and indeed any USAID supported program during reporting is the ability  to convince them  beyond doubt that the target children/audience actually participated in that program. This is the duty before the monitoring and evaluation officer. This he accomplishes through what is called evidential reporting. The M&E Officer should be able to accurately complete the appropriate project forms, appropriately capture pictures related to the project events (with informed consent), and progressive pictures of the condition of the child or project; before, during and after intervention. There should be proper documentation of progressive observation of the child’s or project’s condition; before, during and after intervention, if possible with video coverage.

Finally, during an assessment process, the children should be involved also. Using qualitative method often yields a better result for the researcher. Once a good discussion guide is developed, an older child should be properly trained on how to conduct the group sessions, while an adult watches as the activity director from the background.