Child Participation Advocacy Project in Nyamira County

Child participation allows orphaned and vulnerable Children to influence decisions which affect them. Child participation as a right as provided in UNCRC and African Charter has not been properly established and implemented in Nyamira County processes. This due to lack of strong child participation mechanisms, and weak child protection mechanisms. From the last phases of this project, it was established that several factors contributing to the ineffective implementation of child participation rights especially for OVC within the county. Lack of knowledge on the Child participation rights among themselves. A further challenge is that children have generally been socialized not expect to be consulted to. The project will create awareness and sensitize communities and children Nyamira about Child Participation. Culture and Religion in Nyamira culture beliefs and practices are seen as playing a significant role in undermining child participation initiatives within the community. For instance, children born out of wedlock are not supposed to inherit anything from the grandparents or they do not have a voice in their parent’s family. The belief that children have secondary status, and should adhere to the authority of parents and adults, has permeated legal and political systems, as well as community and familial structures. There is aneed both to challenge mindsets that Support exclusion and to explore values and practices in specific culture that provide for children to be listened to and involved. Nyamira County government has to develop, amend or implement laws policies to suit the promotion of child participation. For instance, the project will raise awareness about child participation including the right of children to access vital documents like birth certificates. It was observed from the previous phase of the project that parent Guardians and caregivers in Nyamira county perceived child participation as threat to their authority in home.

The Meaningful participation of children is important for child protection systems to work. To ensure that children meaningfully participate and contribute to their own protection, efforts shall be made at county level to establish or strengthen platforms where children can engage with duty bearers with each other some of the duty bearers to Engage will include parents, Head Teachers, Religious leaders, Clan Leaders, government through AACs, Village elders, Nyumba Kumi initiative leaders, and others. These platforms include Children assemblies, and clubs in schools, youth groups, and women group at the community level.

This advocacy project basically aims at supporting the OVC to enhance participation in all matters affecting them at different levels in the society. It seeks to improve the quality of life of the children in difficult circumstances by promoting the protection of their rights and making them gain a sense of acceptance and responsibility. Specifically, the project seeks to:

• To raise the level of participation of children in household, school, church and community decision processes
• The headed teachers, parents, church leaders and local authorities respect children’s opinions, ideas, suggestions, choices, and priorities.
• Children become active participants in CRCs
• Reduced violation of the children rights in general in the county

The project design adopts the resilience approach where the emphasis is laid on creating linkages among different forms of capital as a way of sustaining the intervention. Some capitals that the project will exploit during interventions include social capital, institutional capital, spiritual and human capital. This is premised on the fact that increasing child participation requires a multi-stakeholder approach as it is multi-dimensional. For example, children are active in families, schools, churches, and community-based associations like the play or sport groups. There are also policy decisions that require child participation and this points to influencing government institutions. Family and clan leadership are important forms of social capital that the project will seek to influence child participation. The utilization of social capital in in child participation results in the formation of stronger ties and norms of participation. Some strong norms and more often result in the exclusion of children in participation and therefore, for this project to address the root causes of the child participation problem, the intervention needs to anchored on social capital within the Nyamira county. In this line, the project will target the clan leaders, elders councils, cultural leaders, and other networks of Relationships that perpetuate the norms and values of exclusion of children in the decision-making process. The project will target institutions which include community-based self-help groups, CBOs, associations, schools, local government, county and national government like AACs to increase their focus on participation of children. Institutional capital provides ready structures through which influence can be exerted towards child participation. CBOs and CSOs can be useful mobilizing agents for change in the community. Their grassroots-base gives a strategic advantage from influencing child participation. The government and schools are also important areas of influence that the project will make use to change the norms of child participation. In this line of thought will strengthen child participation mechanisms such as child rights clubs (CRCs), County Children assembly. The project will harness the capital in religious groups to increase the participation of children in decision making within the faith communities. Faith communities become the voice for the children as they advocate for child participation. They have children programs that when well utilized can influence the level of participation. Sunday school, women fellowships, leadership structures are important capitals upon which child participation can founded. The religious teachings about children forms an important basis for influencing the change in child participation. In this context, the project will target to influence the church leaders by building on what they believe in to influence child participation. The project will build capacity of volunteers in child participation. This advocacy process is summarized in Figure 1 bellow