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Children and their own Research – a process document
This is an account of a major socio-economic
household survey, covering 7,573 households in eight Panchayats in
Karnataka State in Southern India, conducted by 270 young researchers,
boys and girls aged from eight to eighteen years. They were mostly
working children with little education, belonging to the organisation,
Bhima Sangha, although some school-going children also helped. The
project built on a long-standing strategy of Bhima Sangha to collect
accurate data on which to base their initiatives.
Besides providing accurate information for CWC, the
project aimed to improve child participation and empowerment by
equipping the children with skills to collect information to support
their planning and decision-making. Children and their Research
describes the process of developing the project and training the
children, and the enthusiastic way in which child researchers collected
data and overcame the difficulties facing them. The book does not
present the data or its analysis for us to assess, but it does indicate
some insights that arose from the research.
It also describes the considerable benefits the
research imparted to the children, not least of which were self-esteem
and status within their communities. The children were enthusiastic
because they saw the project as ultimately benefiting themselves and
their communities. They were able to win the cooperation of the
communities by convincing them that the information would benefit their
communities.
Representative children took part in a series of
workshops designed to show them how to analyse data and make cross
comparisons, although professionals did computer work. During these
workshops they produced their own documentation of their experiences,
and discussed how they were going to present the results to their
communities. We are told how they sometimes acted on information they
collected even before the formal analysis and report was produced, such
as alerting authorities to particular households in need and getting
children back into school. A postscript points to further collection of
data by children for subsequent projects. These results show that by
complying with children’s right to information and participation, they
can be empowered to have a beneficial impact on society.
The book reads easily, and is well illustrated with
incidents from the research and quotations from what children said about
it. I recommend it to anyone interested in the practice of child
participation, as well as those more specifically interested in engaging
children in research.
Dr. Michael Bourdillon
Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology,
University of Zimbabwe
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