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Extract from the report pgs 15-17
1. General Context of the Study
The non-governmental organization, Redd Barna of Nicaragua,
directs its activities to the benefit of children who live in situations
of risk, aiming to benefit them in their social, physical, emotional
and intellectual development. This work is carried out in different
countries throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.
This organization has been working in Nicaragua since 1989 and
has accompanied the country in its process of attending to those
children living at greatest risk, through its different governmental
and non-governmental counterparts. Activities have been carried
out in Managua, Esteli, Madriz, Nueva Segovia and Chontales.
Redd Barna, along with different implementing organizations, has
been acquiring important experience in the work with children. As
a consequence of this technical maturity acquired over seven
years of work, spaces have been opened up in the last two years
in which to reflect upon the coherence of intervention strategies
with the organization's mission, vision, objectives, goals-and
more specifically, with the goals of the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. This social-juridical instrument constitutes the
fundamental center of the work, both for Redd Barns as well as
for its counterparts.
As part of this process of reflection and in the context of the
preparation of the working strategy for the coming five years, this
international organization decided to carry out a study that would
provide information about the perceptions that children have. The
study set out to understand how children feel about the
problems they face and the ways in which those problems might
be resolved in their daily lives, as well as inquire about the
situations that lead to joy, satisfactiai, troubles and fears.
It is well known that the greatest value of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child is that of development, precisely because it
consecrates the obligation to potentiate children's and
adolescents' skills. Nevertheless, we know very little about how
this process can be carried forth. It is imperative that children
themselves discuss how they can be active participants in the life
of society. in the planning, implementation and evaluation of the
activities that are developed and carried out and that have to do
with their own lives. Children cannot continue to be seen as
objects that belong to people, or in the best of cases, as
contributors to family income. Rather, they must be seen and
understood a social actors with rights, in accordance with the
new ethics of human rights consecrated in the Convention on the
Rights of the Child.
To date, the work with children has been based primarily upon
the studies and documentation of children who have lived and
continue to live in situations of relative economic, social and
affective security. This is true even though in Nicaragua in recent
years, different research efforts have made the attempt to take
children's opinions and points of view into account. Still, the
information that has been compiled is seen as a complement to
the research and not as a very important element upon which the
findings are based.
The studies of child development have an adult vision of children.
These studies describe and explain child development "from the
outside", that is to say, from the perspective of an adult and not
from the subjective position of a child.
Given this relative absence of research and theoretical reflection
on this theme, this study has an exploratory character, and aims
to achieve an initial approximation towards the knowledge of
subjectivity of children in situations at risk. This study will have
both practical and scientific value.
Scientific, because it is a contribution to the knowledge of the
representations that the children construct of their families,
schools, work and of themselves as well. Practical, because it
contributes to fulfillment of the Rights of the Child in terms of
freedom of expression, decision-making in those areas that have
to do with their own lives, access to information and to being
listened to.
In addition, it contributes to the identification of methods and
pertinent procedures that potentiate the personal resources of
children, starting from the knowledge of which situations cause
joy, satisfaction, feelings of contentment, insecurity, fear or
sadness, as well as the forms and means with which they
confront a given situation.
It also contributes to the identification of the qualities that should
be developed by these children who need special protection to
make possible qualitative leaps in their development that allow
them to form the basis for positive self-esteem.
The results of this study also server as a springboard for the
discussion and unification of fundamental concepts with which to
understand the lives of children-work, participation and children's
organisations.
Owner: Gustavo Pineda and Bertha Rosa Guerra