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Paraphrasing a traditional African proverb, it takes a community or a world to promote child participation. In fact, as adults, child participation should be a core principle in our daily actions.
When I was a teenager, I was a leader in different communitarian awareness workshops and mobilizations for children and their families. Due to this, I’ve learned a lot of things from childhood, but sometimes there are a lot of adult-centered behaviors to affect all forms of development, involvement for children, especially the most vulnerable.
In relation to questions, I consider it is a guideline for implementing programs over communities. Nobody knows much about their issues and context than children and their families, in that sense, organization, community-based organization, faith-based organization or social movement should include those primarily question within our framework in order avoid affecting in a negative way lives for many children.
The transformative pedagogy has help me alot in conducting my work with children and young people with disabilities. Through this tool I am able to engage children actively in any activities and it has really helped them unleashed their potential and their abilities hence they are able to come up with strong decisions on matters concerning them as
I have now worked for children with disabilities for two years now, and what I have experience by engaging them actively is overwhelming, these children are brilliant and it as actually enables them to unleashed their other potentials by coming up with ideas that enables them solve the challenges they were going through
I have supported children’s active participation in my community by giving them chance to identify the problems they are facing as individuals and that of their friends hence giving them chance to find a solution to problems they have identify. In this process some children cannot be able to participate fully since they are afraid that their peers will make fun of them
I would like to enhance long-term collaboration with the children hence I will be able to help them make their own decision hence they will independent leaders in the future
The difficulties I will be facing when working with children are no other than old stereotypes where decision made by children are look down upon many people will nolonger accept children’s ideas in the community since they think that children are not smart like adults
According to my own experience children’s participation is very important since they are able to exercise their full rights of expression and make better decisions in matters concerning them
Lastly children are the future generation the more they are given chance to participate in the early era, the more they are able to build their confidence hence will be able to make good and independent decisions in futureConsidering the nine basic requirements and guiding principles, which ones do you think apply to Tamara’s experience? How do you think you can apply them to the work you do with children? Share some examples.
What challenges do you foresee in applying the 9 basic requirements and how could you overcome them?1. Voluntary, Relevant (as defined by the youth), Respectful (part of a faith practice they already followed), Transparent. I am curious how the communication around Safety (risks of involving youth in broadcasting) went, and how Accountability might be a part of this project.
2. It’s fantastically useful to have these as a checklist to refer to. An example that came to me while I was reading was planning in advance to speak to youth about what happens during an emergency as “Currently, the only people who are trained to be responsible in an emergency scenario are these named adults. So if there is an emergency, we will pause our collective decision-making and follow the directions of those people because we trust them to keep us safe.” There are a lot of scenarios I can see reframing that way, so that routine ways that adults take control become negotiated/informed instances of adults being granted power.
3. Building child-friendly language at different developmental levels seems like the biggest challenge…seems to me like it’s a call to learn how to communicate differently whole-cloth, and would take time and trust to develop between participants.I’m taking this training as an early career teacher (USA-based) who is looking to build skills toward providing childcare for organizing spaces. My vision is for the childcare to not just be babysitting (not to trivialize that labor), but to work towards children participating in organizing spaces. I have supported children’s participation in my classroom by making my lessons actively responsive to their voice and feedback, but mostly at the “Consulted and Informed” level or below :(. Trying to create a new space where the goal is level 6 or above on Hart’s Ladder is a new challenge which will involve building trust with parents & organizers, and advocating for why kids lib should be (or really, already is) a shared value. Difficulties I faced in the classroom were that…schools are places where children are conditioned into seeing themselves as non-participants who don’t have agency over how their time is spent, and my couple hours per week with them generally weren’t enough to bridge that gap. The kids I worked with responded instantly to my efforts to show them that I was listening and would make changes based on their input…but to transform that opening into real participation, they would also have to feel that putting effort into sharing ideas (i.e., investing energy, thought, time, heart into planning how their time in school was spent) was going to be worthwhile. When it never has been worthwhile before, and when school itself is sort of a place they’re coerced into being…that’s a big hill to climb. Occasionally it was possible to do a project that was child-initiated but adult-led (in that one or more of my students volunteered the idea when asked, and I made it happen during a subsequent class), but even in those cases, I wouldn’t say that I actually managed to inform them. Having a conversation about what materials were available / in-budget, what kind of scope was feasible, what would fit curricular goals and what wouldn’t was (for me at least) impossible within the tight class schedule — but also, and maybe more importantly, I couldn’t find a way to present those issues to my students in a way that they would feel interested in taking ownership over and thinking through. I don’t mean to imply that participation models aren’t workable in schools! Those challenges are what’s motivating me to seek out resources like this course, to find alternative interventions and ways of doing this work successfully. Everyone’s participation is important, and intergenerational communication makes so much possible that simply wouldn’t be otherwise.
Tamara’s community project clearly demonstrates the requirements for child participation. It is notably voluntary, child-friendly, inclusive, relevant, and adult-supported.
IAs per how I intend to adapt this to my own reality, I intend to henceforth engage children in projects that are children sensitive and relevant to the society. On certain occasions, we as adults tend to project our beliefs on children however by these guiding principles and Tamara’s video, I have come to learn and shall engage progressively that children have a right to participate voluntarily in projects that impact positively on them and also they need to be involved in children friendly policies. They have a right to be heard. They have a right to chose. They have a right to say No and they have a right to be respected.I’ve always worked with children and for children when developing cultural projects in endangered communities. Nowadays I’m working with the “World Religions Education 4 Kids” in a literacy project. But I truly feel a lack of children participation in the international interfaith organizations.
1. I think ms Tamara’s community project with her priest is most based on the principles from 1 to 5, because it is very child-friendly but wasn’t inclusive and I have safety concerns with media projects with children.
2. The most complex issue I foresee is the proper age developmental pedagogical methodologies and practices in inter-generational scenarios for all the involved security.1. Analyzing the children’s needs, capacities, and desire in the project and in participating in it. Creating a safe space for their progressive participation, according to their capacities. To which social, educational, and psychological problems may appear.
2. I want to enhance my capacities in the level of seeming involvement the most so that I may understand the underlying bases of children pedagogy.
3. Due to complexity of interfaith literacy, I’m afraid children might find it boring. And due to the hegemonic violence culture they have, that they also get defensive against peace culture education.
4. Children are vital to the interfaith peace culture movement because they are the ones that will have to decide for our planetary future sustainable development.1. I support children’s active and meaningful participation in my community by making them implementers of the tasks and hearing from them, on how best can we do things before i put my input on the project. I want them to be empowered and be problem solvers through teamworking. I faced challenges of limited time and resources
2. I would like to enhance a problem solving character and an atmosphere of possibilities among their thoughts
3. Shifting the mindset of other colleagues who interact with the children in some areas or learning areas from tokenism to meaningful participation
4. From my own experience children’s participation is vital because they represent the future and if we engage them now they would be more responsible in the future. Also they have a better way of understanding the environment among themselves, hence, their views and contributions should be respected1. During the pandemic Tamara activity was to mobilised her community which had great impact both in her community and outside community through the radio.
2. I do believe that it’s very important to involve the children in the activities that they want so as active participation.
1.To support children participation is very important due to the fact that it gives a child to engage in the learning process.
2. I like to emphasise the collaboration work with my children
3. You have to change the mindset of the people particularly teachers to shift from tokenism to meaningful participation.
4. It is more than important due to the fact that the children also they’ve something in their brains, their brains are not empty.
Wonderful, I have been working with children for more than 10 years but it seems to me by listening these stories that I have never known how to deal with young people.This is of a great help for me.
1. Through engagment in task in classroom, and also engaging i n role play that will help the children well.
2. I will like to improve in my relationship with them, because it is important to build a better relationship.
3, Due to nature of children, I found it difficult in controlling them and organizing.
