A Toolkit for Monitoring and Evaluating Children's
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A TOOLKIT FOR MONITORING AND EVALUatING CHILDREN’S PARTICIpatION BOOKLET 1 Introduction Save the Children works in more than 120 countries. We save children’s lives. We fight for their rights. We help them fulfil their potential. This guide was written by Gerison Lansdown and Claire O’Kane Acknowledgements So many children and young people, adults and agencies have Edwin John, NCN, India made significant contributions to shaping and improving Jose Campang and Helen Maralees, Plan Guatemala this toolkit. We are sorry not to be able to mention all the Santiago Devila, Plan Latin America, and Plan colleagues individual names, but we really appreciate the crucial inputs and partners in Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, that every individual involved has made. Honduras, and Paraguay Alice Behrendt, Plan International Senegal We would like to particularly acknowledge steering group Francis Salako, Akakpo Dofoe Kafui, Ali Essoh, Kegbao committee members who have steered and guided the Fousseni, Plan Togo inter-agency piloting process over a two-year period: Dev Ale, Save the Children Nepal and Gurung Devraj, Kavita Ratna (Concerned for Working Children), Alana Tuki Nepal Kapell (Office of the Special Representative on Violence Clare Back, Rebecca Lawson, and Zoe Davidson, Save Against Children), Bill Badham (Participation Works), Sara the Children Osterland, Sarah Stevenson, Vera Gahm, and Elspeth Bo Gregory Dery, Mary Appiah, Faustina Tietaah, Eugenia (Plan International), Rachele Tardi Forgacs, Bill Bell and Atami, Cecilia Andersen, Philip Boadu, Doris Adjoa Arkoh Hannah Mehta (Save the Children), Miriam Kramer and Tetteh, Moses Gbekle, and Phillipa Nkansah, World Vision Judith Diers (UNICEF), Phillipa Lei and Paul Stephenson Ghana (World Vision). Thanks also to contributions from Anne Manyando Chisenga, Lifuna Simushi, Ignatius Mufwidakule, Crowley, Jo Feather, Tricia Young, Clare Hanbury, Ravi World Vision Zambia Karkara, Annette Giertsen and Monica Lindvall. Stella Nkuramah-Ababio and Juliane Simon, World Vision We also appreciate the immense efforts by the focal We also extend our appreciation to the Oak Foundation, for points and agencies involved in the piloting process and in funding the piloting and development of the toolkit, and also participating in the global reflection workshop in Ghana: for a unique and consistent dedication to promoting genuine James Boyon, Gbedzonie Akonasu, Gift Bralaye Ejemi, expressions of children’s voices. We would like to thank the Gabriel Semeton Hunge, African Movement of Working team in the Child Abuse Programme, and more particularly Children and Youth Nigeria Jane Warburton, Fassil Mariam and Anastasia Anthopoulos. Roshini Nuggehalli and Anitha Sampath, Concerned for Working Children, India Thanks also to Ravi Wickremasinghe, Sue Macpherson and Nohemi Torres and Harry Shier, CESESMA Nicaragua Bharti Mepani of Save the Children for support in the final Lucy Morris and Brussels Mughogho, EveryChild Malawi stages of publication. Published by Save the Children 1 St John’s Lane London EC1M 4AR UK +44 (0)20 7012 6400 savethechildren.org.uk First published 2014 © The Save the Children Fund 2014 The Save the Children Fund is a charity registered in England and Wales (213890) and Scotland (SC039570). Registered Company No. 178159 This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee or prior permission for teaching purposes, but not for resale. For copying in any other circumstances, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher, and a fee may be payable. Cover photo: Members of Child Brigade, an organisation of street and working children in Bangladesh. (Photo: Ken Hermann) Typeset by Grasshopper Design Company Printed by Simmons Ltd CONTENTS Preface v 1 What is the M&E toolkit? 1 2 Participation: setting the context 3 What participation means 3 Why participation is important 5 Challenges to achieving progress 6 What needs to change? 7 3 Monitoring and evaluating children’s participation 9 The case for monitoring and evaluation 9 What is participatory monitoring and evaluation? 9 Issues to address in measuring, monitoring and evaluating children’s participation 12 4 Ensuring ethical participation in monitoring and evaluation 14 The basic requirements of ethical participation 14 A checklist for ethical participation in monitoring and evaluation 16 5 Reflections and lessons learned 18 6 Useful resources on participation and M&E 20 Endnotes 22 iii phOTO: chRIS DE BODE/saVE the chILDREN A Syrian refugee holds a kite she made bearing a personal message wishing for peace in her country. PREFE AC In recent years, non-government organisations (NGOs) working to promote children’s rights, as well as governments and donors, have emphasised the need to develop better indicators against which to monitor and measure children’s participation in terms of three key aspects: structure, process and outcomes. Numerous models have been explored, and discussions have taken place across many different agencies and in different regions of the world, to identify indicators that are not only meaningful but based on data that can be collected and analysed with relative ease. This monitoring and evaluation (M&E) toolkit builds on those discussions and their outputs, taking as its starting point a document called Criteria for the Evaluation of Children’s Participation in Programming, which was produced in collaboration with partners of the Bernard van Leer Foundation in Brazil and published in 2004.1 That document set out a conceptual framework for monitoring and evaluating how children participate in projects and programmes. It was further developed for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2008, incorporating perspectives from the region as well as adding a dimension on measuring children’s participation in their wider society.2 It was subsequently amended to more fully reflect the interpretation of children’s participation given by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its General Comment on Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).3 It also incorporated feedback from participants at a conference in Canada on accountability, monitoring and evaluation held in 2009, and from a consultative review across Save the Children UK, also in 2009.4 This final version of the toolkit has been produced following an 18-month pilot, funded by the Oak Foundation. It involved ten projects from nine countries in different regions of the world, in partnership with Save the Children, UNICEF, Plan, World Vision and The Concerned for Working Children. The participating organisations were: l S ave the Children, Nepal l T he Concerned for Working Children, India l N eighbourhood Community Network, India l World Vision, Ghana l World Vision, Zambia l E veryChild, Malawi l Plan, Guatemala l Plan, Ecuador l C entre for Education in Health and Environment (CESESMA), Nicaragua l African Movement of Working Children and Youth, Nigeria Representatives of these organisations met in Nairobi in 2011 to familiarise themselves with the draft M&E toolkit and to receive guidance on the methodology for piloting it. The aim was to work collaboratively with children and young people to test the tools and other materials to assess their relevance, accessibility, practicality, and usefulness in contributing towards a greater understanding of what children’s participation involves, and how to engage children in meaningful participation, as well as its outcomes and value. Over the next 18 months, those who took part in the Nairobi meeting piloted the toolkit; they produced six-monthly progress reports and participated in regular v webinars to share experiences. They met again in Accra, Ghana, in May 2013, together with some of the children and young people they work with, to review and share findings. The richness of those experiences cannot be adequately reflected here, but overall, the feedback made clear that the materials were greatly valued by the BOOKLET 1 participants and their respective organisations. ON I Those participating in the pilot used the toolkit to undertake a rigorous scrutiny of the T participation work they were involved in, with other adults and with children and young ipa C I people. They found that using the toolkit helped in a number of ways. For example: RT A l it enhanced people’s understanding of children’s participation (for children and P S ’ adults alike) l it led to improvements in the quality of participation, making it more inclusive and DREN using it to strengthen child protection HIL C l it helped children and adults clarify their goals and measure progress in attaining them G N I l it provided visible feedback for children on the nature and outcomes of their T involvement l it produced accessible results that were relatively easy to interpret Evalua l the visual nature of many of the tools and subsequent representation of information ND A gathered enthuses children and maintains their interest. G N I The piloting of the toolkit also produced many creative and constructive suggestions about how the materials could be improved. These included: sharing other locally TOR I developed tools for gathering data; simplifying some of the concepts and language used; adapting activities for younger children and children with disabilities; emphasising the importance of sensitisation with adults; and highlighting the need to invest sufficient time in the process of monitoring and evaluation. T FOR MON lki One of the most powerful messages arising from the pilot was the imperative for OO organisations working with children and young people to engage in more effective T A monitoring and evaluation of their participation work. All those involved in the pilot emphasised the significant benefits they had experienced through using the toolkit, from helping them to better understand why they were doing this kind of work, to strengthening and improving its scope and quality, and analysing – and indeed, celebrating – its outcomes more effectively. In particular, all the participants emphasised the fundamental importance of gaining organisational commitment to monitoring and evaluating the outcomes of children’s participation activities.