Working in communities means being inclusive of children and young people.
This image is of participants and their children in Eastern Indonesia who participated in the WASH and Beyond Participatory Action Research Project around 2019.
I recently had an interview, and I was asked about Child Protection, with the added clarification that as a social inclusion advisor, I didn’t directly work with children and young people. I think they were looking for a response about working for a world where all children, everywhere, are protected, taking a risk-averse position, and how child protection is central to the Sustainable Development Goals. Perhaps they wanted to hear that at the heart of any organised and effective child protection responses, it is important to know how to gather, analyse and disseminate quality gender-sensitive data and information to identify which children (individuals and groups) are vulnerable and why. The data will create evidence-based programmes, policy advocacy, and behaviour change interventions.
I didn’t say that (perhaps to my detriment). I talked about how we can’t assume that I wouldn’t be working directly with children because in many of my projects in the past, it has been important to make the project child-safe to ensure some of the most marginalised folks can participate.
I spoke about working with regional and remote indigenous communities and the importance of making projects child safe. The first project I ever worked on was a community arts development project with young men (aged 15 to 21) in the juvenile justice system. Most of these young men were legally a child or young persons (under the age of 18), some of them were fathers, and some of them were caregivers for younger siblings because their parents were absent for a variety of reasons, including because some were in prison. This participatory advocacy project was about giving a voice to young Indigenous men, and they chose the medium of graffiti. They were working with health centres and other public institutions to use their walls, and on them were painting indigenous-related advocacy messages, as well as using indigenous language. The young men were proud of their work and taking up space as young advocates and activists, and they wanted these project spaces to be safe for their families to visit and interact with as we worked together. It was important to the group that the project spaces were family-friendly, which meant it was safe for young people who were not directly involved. We needed to co-create a risk assessment and develop mutual risk assessment strategies to ensure the project space was safe for young people who were not direct project participants.
Another project I worked on with Indigenous women in far north Australia was one where to work with the women, we needed to accommodate them bringing their children or the children they cared for. At first, the women were wary and wanted their children close, as the community has experienced a lot of trauma with children being removed from families. However, as our working relationship grew and trust was built, they brought their children in because it was a cultural norm. I understood that groups of people could not be really separated and that working in a community meant making the projects inclusive of children and young people. This means I had to make sure there were considerations and activities that were also suitable for children to participate in.
My experience working with Rohingya women was similar: if I planned to work with a group of women, the space, activities and safeguarding assessments had to include children and young people, or else we would be excluding many of the women.
This pattern was also noticed with other under-represented groups; for example, in Mangarrai (Eastern Indonesia), we had a small group of people with disabilities in our WASH project, and one particular man in the group was considered a leader in the blind community. He was also the primary carer at home with his young son, while his wife (who was able-bodied) was the main wage earner in the family. This meant that for five years in the project, we needed to ensure that we could accommodate his young son in all project meetings, from when he was still a toddler to when he was a young child wanting to run around and play. Over the years, it was not uncommon for parents who have a disability to need to bring their kids, depending on personal circumstances and the time of the year. (school holidays, etc.) We needed to ensure that there was a local worker who could take care of the children present while abiding by safeguarding measures and ensure that we set the project up so that having kids around added to the project and contributed to the project goals and outcomes — by allowing those most marginalised and often exclude to participate actively.
Working with diverse SOGIESC communities in the Pacific meant working with the local communities to ensure their family needs were not disrupted by the projects, and that often meant supporting people with caregiving responsibilities. This included MSM and gay and bisexual men who had children, third-gender feminine folks and trans women who were parents, sometimes adopting children in cultural ways or caring for young trans folks who had left home due to family violence and discrimination. Many lesbians, bisexual women, and trans men had children, or their partners had children. I have also noticed a pattern of diverse SOGIESC people taking on unpaid carer roles in their families — often akin to the traditional gender roles given to women under patriarchy. Taking care of children, people with disabilities and older family members.
All this is to say that if we are truly being inclusive of marginalised and vulnerable groups, including women, people with disabilities, young people, and people with diverse SOGIESC, we need to be inclusive of their family and community life. We need to have honest co-design conversations about what needs the groups have beyond the individual to the family and community and how we can accommodate those needs to ensure that we don’t exclude people from our projects. It might even add layers of insight and community engagement beyond our wildest expectations.
Whether it is because bringing children is a social norm or because it makes them feel safer, perhaps because they can’t afford to ask someone to look after them, whether payment is in money or more unpaid child care labour in return, perhaps they don’t feel like they can ask someone else for reasons we don’t know about and are none of our business.
Working in decolonial ways in the majority world means working in ways that align with the participants and their communities. For many communities, this means creating projects that are safe and inclusive of the children and young people they care for.
