Children's Participation in Development and Humanitarian Action

A half-day workshop is organised to bring together various experts for an informal roundtable discussion on “Children’s Participation in Development and Humanitarian Action”. Three presentations from very different contexts will be given prior to the debate. 

The first speaker will be Harry Shier who has been working for the past few years with CESESMA - an organisation supporting children in the Nicaraguan coffee industry. Harry is well-known as author of the influential piece 'Pathways to Participation' published in 'Children & Society' in 2001. He has spent this academic year at the University of the West of England as a visiting fellow developing research on children's participation that has involved a comparison of the UK and Nicaragua. 

Roz Evans - a doctoral student at the University of Oxford - is the second speaker. Roz has been undertaking extensive fieldwork with Bhutanese refugee children in Nepal around issues of participation. An initial article based on her fieldwork was published in 'Children, Youth and Environments' in 2007. 

The final speaker will be Udi Butler who is a lecturer in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University. Udi's research has been with children, adolescents and young adults living in a context of urban poverty in Rio de Janeiro. He has been involved with a number of action-research projects on this theme in Rio with CIESPI (International Centre for Research and Policy on Childhood). His most recent research funded by the ESRC’s Non-Governmental and Public Action Programme looks at young people's perceptions of and participation in public action in Brazil.