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The Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG) links university scholarship with the development of policies, environments, and programs to fulfill children’s rights and improve the quality of their lives. There are two major strands to CERG’s work. The first is a broad concern with the fulfillment of children’s rights. The second is a more specific focus on the planning, design and management of children’s physical environments. Following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, CERG’s work addresses children of all ages from birth to eighteen and also works a great deal with what some countries call “youth”.
Our research focuses on understanding children’s lives and the conditions that influence them, with the goal of changing those conditions. To that end, we are equally concerned with the development of theory, policy, and practice.
CERG has a focus on children living in poverty and in low-income communities, both in New York City and overseas. We are part of Childwatch, and we conduct much of our international work in partnership with this international network of child rights research organizations.
We have a particular commitment and expertise to understanding children’s own perspectives on their lives. Because of the particular backgrounds of our members, much of our research focuses on understanding children’s relationship to the physical environment and how we can use this knowledge to influence environmental policy, planning and design but this is gradually broadening as we partner with other groups. We have a number of primary, but overlapping, areas of concern: