Creating an Enabling Environment - Capacity Building in Children’s Participation

Summary: This publication contains the outcome of an overall documentation and assessment of capacity building in children’s participation during 2000-2004 which examined the quality and cost effectiveness of inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes, making recommendations about future SCS work in children’s participation in Viet Nam and the SEAP region.

“Creating an Enabling Environment - Capacity building in children’s participation, Save the Children Sweden, Viet Nam, 2000-2004," by Henk van Beers, Vo Phi Chau, Judith Ennew, Pham Quoc Khan, Tran Thap Long, Brian Milne, Trieu Tri Anh Nguyet and Vu Thi Son, Save the Children Sweden, Bangkok, 2006.”

In 2000, Save the Children Sweden (SCS) conducted an exploratory assessment in Viet Nam on the understanding of children’s participation among its staff, partners, and other agencies, as well as the level of children’s participation. The report of the 2000 assessment acknowledged that further skills were needed to involve children in programming. As part of a larger capacity-building process, training was recommended to enhance skills and knowledge of staff and partners of SCS in Viet Nam and the SEAP region. Opportunities were created for the involvement of children, through pilot projects relating children-friendly learning environments in schools and a children-friendly district in Ho Chi Minh City. National forums were organized where children could discuss and share their experiences about issues affecting their lives.

All this work aimed to contribute to creating an enabling environment for children’s participation-providing opportunities for children to participate and ensuring that adults have the knowledge and skills to facilitate children’s involvement.

The text of this report is divided into six chapters. The first two introductory chapters examine the largely documentary information about the context in which the capacity-building programme took place, with attention to the approach taken to participation by the Government of Viet Nam over time, and the response of SCS in Viet Nam. The third chapter describes the research process, in which three embedded research projects took place using a common protocol and core set of research tools. This chapter also describes the methods used and their limitations, as well as the types and numbers of research participants.

Chapters 4 and 5 describe and analyze the research data, using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, comparing and contrasting the data collected from different groups and using different tools. The final chapter turns to a deeper analysis of what the data mean and makes recommendations both for the practice of children’s participation and for future SCS programming in Viet Nam.  

pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/seap_vietnam_environ.pdf

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