Download APPENDIX III: THE TRIPLE ”A` CHILD RIGHTS AND COMMUNITY

APPENDIX III: THE TRIPLE ‘A’ CHILD RIGHTS AND COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
Background
The Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and Community Development Process is an approach developed by the
International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD), University of Victoria, Canada.
Originally used by UNICEF’s as a Triple ‘A’ rapid assessment, analysis, action tool, it has been
adapted to incorporate a strong focus on strategic, rights based systems change linking children,
communities and governments that breaths life into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC).
Since it’s adaptation in 1994, it has since been used within diverse cultures, countries and contexts to:
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Monitor and strengthen local, provincial and national child protection systems
Develop the capacity of local governance in rights based approaches to working with
vulnerable communities
Reinforce child and youth engagement in local decision making
Rebuild communities after natural disasters
Create responsive systems of support for refugee and war affected children, and
Develop culturally grounded, child and family services in Indigenous and ethnic minority
communities
IICRD’s Developmental Child Rights Approach
The Triple “A” Child Rights and Community Development Process is a set of tools rooted in IICRD’s
Developmental Child Rights Approach - a “bottom up” - “top down” systems change strategy to create
positive, sustainable change in children’s lives. This approach focuses on “mapping” assets,
opportunities and capacities for dignity, belonging and justice within a child’s social ecology, as well as
identifying rights gaps in accountability to these determinants of children’s life, survival and
development. Using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a framework, the
Developmental Child Rights Approach builds on the strengths and capacities of children, their
communities, and culture to help contextualize the reality of children, and create sustainable
interventions that bridge the gap between children’s lived experiences and systemic structures and
government policies.
The complexities of these influencing factors on children’s lives are brought to life in IICRD’s Child
Rights Ecology:
The Child Rights Ecology recognizes the many integrated and contextualized factors that contribute to
the realization or lack of realization of the rights of each child by placing the child at the centre of a
series of circles representing the factors and systems that influence, and are influenced by, the holistic
development of the child:
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Children’s inner world (emotional, spiritual, cognitive)
Children’s outer world (physical, social, behavioral)
Other children and youth
Family
Community, natural and built environment
Civil society, government and non-governmental
Cultural, social, economic, civil and political
Similarly, the Child Rights Ecology demonstrates how the child contributes to his/her social reality,
while simultaneously being affected and served by it, highlighting the interconnectedness of child
development and societal well-being.
By connecting the Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and Community Development Process to the Child Rights
Ecology, IICRD’s helps organizations and communities focus on filling the gaps, and build and further
strengthen the bridges across and within the systems of children’s lives to create long term change
within these systems.
Some of the key components organizations and communities are able to address through this process
include:
From the “Bottom Up”
♦ Assessing, and integrating children’s views
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Assessing and analyzing legal and policy
accountability frameworks in terms of “rights
gaps” and “rights bridges”
♦ Mapping local relations, risks and resilience
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Developing programs to build the capacity
of rights holders to claim their rights and
duty bearers to meet their responsibilities
♦ Identifying and strengthening supports for
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Addressing structural inequalities
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Monitoring systems for child rights
and lived experience at the centre of all
actions for change
for and with children
children
♦ Reinforcing child supporting cultural values,
From the “Top Down”
spiritual beliefs and practices applied to
children’s full and healthy development.
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Creating “negotiated” social space between
government and children and their
communities
Throughout the application of the Developmental Child Rights Approach through IICRD’s tools
(including the Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and Community Development Process) a strong emphasis is
placed on the strengths of children, youth, their communities and their cultural contexts to ensure that
all systems change strategies (policies, practices and attitudes) build on assets and are contextualized
within the lived realities of the children.
Unlike other approaches, experience and research has shown that the Developmental Child Rights
Approach:
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Emphasizes
the
importance
of
capabilities and opportunities as
foundations for peoples’ full and
healthy development rather than a
more narrowly defined economic
definition;
Builds on “assets” or strength based
models of community development
(Kertzman & McKnight, 1993) and
youth development (Dryfoos, 1990),
emphasizing the inner resources of
young people as important starting
places to address risk;
Emphasizes the investment in young
people’s assets and protective
factors rather than focusing solely on specific problems;
Sheds light on the context of children’s lives, emphasizing the importance of
connectedness, achievement, participation, and strategic partnership as effective
strategies for overcoming challenges to children and youth (Rajani, 2001);
Mobilizes local assets and protective mechanisms to create an enabling environment
for children’s survival, development, protection and participation (Cook, Blanchet- Cohen,
Hart, 2004); and
Combines the best of rights based accountability with individual and community
development strategies (Cook, 2007).
In short, a Developmental Child Rights Approach is effective because it helps organizations and
communities to further:
♦ Implement the human rights of children in context ;
♦ Identify and support the most vulnerable children;
♦ Understand children’s different needs and potentials (e.g. through the meaningful
participation of children);
♦ Understand and support the decision-making role of children in communities, programming
and policy making;
♦ Ensure all children are a priority;
♦ Inform policies and legislation, and
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Justify requests for resources and support from donors, governments and NGOs.
The Triple ‘A’
♦ Uses a child-centred approach that
brings communities together to create
a vision for children and families and
develop tangible action plan to breathe
life into that vision;
♦ Builds on a holistic community
participation process that identifies
local risks for children and strengthens
local child and family supports;
♦ Engages key individuals, including
children and youth in designing
programs and services that reduce risk
and strengthen protection through
community development;
♦ Engages children, communities and
government
in
rights
based
discussions and actions with systems
wide
accountability
and
local
development; and
♦ Involves
children
and
youth
meaningfully in this process.
The Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and Community
Development Process
In seeking to create sustainable systems change in
support of children’s human rights, IICRD has been
working to develop the capacity of human service
professions (governmental and non-governmental) on the
key principles of children’s rights, child development, child
and youth participation, protection, psychosocial
rehabilitation
within
a
culturally-grounded
rights
framework, and provide them with the tools to engage
children, youth and their communities in programming and
policy development. The Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and
Community Development Process is a tried and tested,
strategic process and set of tools that we have used to
achieve these goals.
A key component of the Triple ‘A’ that differentiates it from
other child rights or community development approaches
is its capacity to create a negotiated social space
between children, their communities, and various levels of
governance (local, provincial and national) to create timebound, measurable actions supporting children’s rights to
their full and healthy development.
The benefits to children and their families are the creation of rights based solutions to local rights
challenges based on their own identification of rights gaps, and local assets that incorporates child
and youth active involvement as change agents. It also assists local child focused practitioners, and
government and non-governmental agencies in better responding to children’s issues that support
their inherent human rights.
This Triple “A” Child Rights and Community
Development Process is a step by step, strategic
process in which IICRD staff works with a local
organization to train local Triple ‘A’ facilitators and
a program manager, who in turn work with local
stakeholders (including children and youth) to
develop tangible action plans, monitoring
systems, advocacy networks, and trained cohorts
of engaged children, youth, and key local
children’s advocates.
Capacity development for local staff focuses on
the ‘bottom-up’ component of the Developmental
Child Rights Approach in relation to a country’s
child rights laws and policies. This assists staff to
better understand and contextualize the situation
of children, youth and their communities and
enhances the effectiveness of their programming
in relation to the local child rights environment.
The experiential trainings cover:
♦ Child rights and child development
♦ Strength-based approaches to working with young people
♦ Local mapping of rights gaps and developmental assets;
♦ Rights-based experiential activities with young people (walking tours, mapping, photo
framing, role playing, focus groups);
♦ Semi-structured interviews with local child advocates;
♦ Guided rights-based discussions with children, local care providers and community leaders
that analyze problems, and root causes of problems;
♦ Creating of local action plans that apply the principles of the CRC and link children, key
community members and governments to fill rights gaps and strengthen child centred assets,
and
♦ Creating sustainable, local monitoring systems linking children, communities and
government
In addition to these onsite trainings, IICRD provides ongoing support to the local organizational staff
and program manager who oversees and coordinates the process and activities with the young
people, their families and communities, and government community facilitators..
The Process
The Triple ‘A’ Child Rights and Community Development Process is initiated with an invited site visit or
pre-assessment, and commitment by a local organization (s) not only to engage in the process, but to
provide ongoing support for the resulting child-led action plans. Once this is secured, the training and
3 step Triple ‘A’ Process is initiated.
The 3 steps of the Triple ‘A’ process include:
1. Assessment. The first step of the process is an assessment of the community’s capacity to
support children and youth, whereby young people, their care providers, families, Elders,
community members and local officials identify the strengths and weaknesses that exist for
young people. Children’s views are collected first and presented to the larger community to
spur discussion and collect further information. Elder involvement ensures a strong focus on
building on cultural strengths and traditions, while local official/community leader involvement
ensures that the players who have the authority to make changes to policies and services are
part of the process.
Triple “A” Assessment:
Indigenous youth in Western Canada map community risks and strengths to inform the transformation of child protection services
2. Analysis. The second step, analysis, engages children, youth, their families and the broader
community in a collective process to critically analyze the data (the child-focused strengths,
challenges and needs) collected from the assessment.
Triple “A” Analysis:
Youth in Victoria, Canada, conduct a photo framing analysis of municipal civic engagement strengths and challenges
3. Action. In the third step, action, children, youth, their families, community based service
providers, local officials and Elders develop child-centered action plans that utilize and build on
local strengths to address their primary areas of concern. As a result, young people, their
families and the community determine the results of the process and benefit from participating
in the design, development and implementation of actions to meet their specific needs. The
“actions” (i.e. community projects, training, monitoring and advocacy) are bottom-up projects
that are culturally grounded and participatory. Each action is carried out by different community
stakeholders (E.g. Children typically have their own distinct actions that tie into the larger
community actions) and supported by the lead organization, ideally in cooperation with other
local or regional organizations.
Triple “A” Action:
Children in Blugumbosch, South Africa, participate in developing community gardens supporting orphans and other vulnerable children
The Tools
Specific assessment tools are selected from a broad range of interventions, to ensure age, cultural
and contextual suitability, for example:
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Walking tours
Social mapping
Photo framing
Focus group discussions
Creative visualization processes
Elder discussions
Individual interviews with local child advocates
Problem tree analysis
Root cause analysis
Action mapping
The Results
Different types of child-led and child-centered actions that commonly result from the Triple ‘A’ process
include:
♦ Capacity building: e.g. Training local government practitioners to support child rights in the
context of community development.
♦ Service delivery: e.g. Creating action focused partnerships linking children, government and
civil society
♦ Advocacy: e.g. Children and local advocates strategize on their right to access to services.
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Monitoring: e.g. Young people form a committee and work closely with organizations to
provide feedback and suggestions on their youth programming.
Community Results have included:
♦ A cohort of government and/or non-government staff and facilitators
trained in the Triple ‘A’.
♦ Key areas identified as priorities for the lead organization.
♦ Triple ‘A’ process carried out with local children and youth.
♦ Psychosocial healing and recovery of young people on a holistic level.
♦ Young people and community actively engaged in community
development process.
♦ The development of local child rights steering committees supporting
sustainable child rights programming.
♦ Increased cohesion, collaboration and child-centred peace building at
the community level.
♦ Youth-led Action Plans implemented to address needs identified by
young people themselves.
♦ Youth Committees formed with viable connections to youth networks,
community groups, government and agencies.
♦ Well-being indicators developed with children, youth and families for a
contextualized monitoring and evaluation Process.
♦ Evaluation of project impact.
Conclusion
Children, women, youth, elders, local and international NGOs, service providers, community leaders
and government officials are engaged in every stage of the IICRD’s Triple ‘A’ Youth and Community
Development Process that uses a Developmental Child Rights Approach. As a result, community
actions tend to address the primary needs of the children that build on existing strengths and utilize
culturally appropriate methodologies. The process also creates linkages between child and community
actions to the local government that has the potential to influence policies and practices on a much
larger scale. While it is important to note, that this process should not be undertaken lightly as it
labour intensive and requires a long term commitment, the empowerment of the young people and
their communities and the sustainability of results are unparalleled.
Contact Information
For more information on the Triple ‘A’ process or to receive specific information on Triple ‘A’ reports or
other IICRD material please contact:
Dr. Philip Cook
[email protected]
or
Vanessa Currie
[email protected]
Tel. (250) 472-4762
Mailing address:
IICRD
Centre for Global Studies
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC
Canada
V0N 2M2