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The Drum Beat 565 – Reducing Violence in Young Children’s Lives
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November 1 2010
Trouble reading this edition? View it online – http://www.comminit.com/en/drum_beat_565.html
- BACKGROUND: violence and young children.
- Please visit The CI’s EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT THEME SITE.
- A few INITIATIVES designed to combat this problem.
- Please vote in a POLL: ECD top goal?
- Early-childhood-related RESOURCES.
- MORE options for CI- and Soul Beat Africa-related content.
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This issue of The Drum Beat explores ways in which communication strategies and initiatives are being drawn on around the world in an effort to reducing violence in young children’s lives.
Below is just a small sampling. For all content on The Communication Initiative website focused on this theme, please visit the Bernard Van Leer Foundation-sponsored Early Childhood Development Theme Site’s Priority Focus Area on Reducing Violence.
Please send us your own early childhood development (ECD)-related ideas and items focused on this theme: drumbeat@comminit.com
by Emiliana Vegas and Lucrecia Santibáñez
This February 2010 World Bank book on early childhood development (ECD) surveys evidence on the impact of ECD programmes worldwide, including providing empirical evidence, and reports on the effect that ECD policies and programmes have on poverty and inequality in Latin American and Caribbean countries. As stated here, «The micro context – the interaction between a child and her or his primary caregiver during the early years – sets a child on a trajectory that affects her or his future development…»
2. Setting Our Agenda on Early Learning, Violence and Physical Environment
Published in August 2010, this edition of Early Childhood Matters outlines 3 core emphases as the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) fleshes out its goals for the period 2010 to 2015 – one of which is reducing violence in young children’s lives. BvLF will work to: amplify children’s voices and advocating for children within legislative reforms; advocate for and support national systems for data collection; form national action plans to eliminate violence against children; conduct research; explore beliefs about the acceptability of interpersonal violence, about masculinity, and about the social status of women and children; and focus on other fields working on some of the root causes of violence, including unemployment, public insecurity, and alcohol abuse. Amongst the other articles in this edition is an interview with the UN special representative on violence against children.
by Adele Jones and Ena Trotman Jemmott
This study identifies interlocking factors that perpetuate child sexual abuse across Caribbean countries, as follows: harmful sexual cultures (implicit social sanctioning), males with sexually abusive behaviours, females with complicit behaviours, officials with collusive (condoning) behaviours, lack of awareness of effects and consequences, lack of collective public/professional outrage, ineffective systems for reporting and responding to abuse, patriarchal values which place protecting male status and privilege above protection of the child, and disempowerment of children.
4. Violence, Power and Participation: Building Citizenship in Contexts of Chronic Violence
by Jenny Pearce
This March 2007 paper uses data from a field study of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Colombia and Guatemala to explore whether and how CSOs work on – as well as in – violence. One case highlighted is the CSO Conciudadanía, which supports Amor, a women’s organisation in Antioquia, Colombia. Amor has stood up to insurgents and paramilitaries, and campaigned against the abuse of women and children.
5. The Place of Sport in the UN Study on Violence against Children
by Celia Brackenridge, Kari Fasting, Sandra Kirby, Trisha Leahy, Sylvie Parent, and Trond Svela Sand
«This [April 2010] paper presents a secondary analysis of supporting documents from the UN [United Nations] Study on Violence against Children. The purpose of the analysis is to identify sport-related material in the documents and gaps in research knowledge about the role of sport in both preventing and facilitating violence against children.»
6. The Other Half of Gender: Men’s Issues in Development
by Maria C. Correia (ed.) and Ian Bannon (ed.)
The chapters in this June 2006 book explore definitions of masculinity and male identities in a variety of social contexts, drawing from experiences in Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. According to the book, regardless of their economic status, all men see their own role as the principal provider and often as disciplinarian, similar to the role of men in patriarchal families.
See also:
YOUR ONE-STOP PLACE FOR: Early Child Development
KEY AREAS OF FOCUS INCLUDE:
SELECTED VIOLENCE REDUCTION INITIATIVES
7. Programa Nacional Wawa Wasi – Peru
This Peruvian government programme draws on interpersonal communication and community participation in an effort to nourish and educate children aged 6-48 months who are living in poverty. Each Wawa Wasi centre is led by a community member called a «Mother-Carer» («Madre Cuidadora») who has been screened to ensure that she is accepted by the community, shows love and care for children, and can read and write fluently.
Empower is a non-profit organisation working in the Southern Districts of Tamil Nadu, India, to «facilitate the community to gain control over their lives by nurturing their innate capacities to make their own choices.» The organisation aims to empower marginalised communities such as women, children, and youth of socially and economically disadvantaged communities. For instance, one programme worked to developed activities for women and children who were abused. This included providing temporary shelter, offering counselling and training in life skills, and providing phone-line counselling for women in distress.
ChildHope provides resources, information, support, and training to organisations working in 10 countries in Africa, Asia and South America that challenge the many forms of violence suffered by children and young people.
See also:
Please VOTE in our Early Child Development Poll: ECD Top Goal
Which of these early childhood development goals is most important in your context?
- Reducing children’s exposure to violence.
- Group organisation for self-advocacy.
- Quality early learning, at scale.
- Improved physical environments.
A few select comments:
«I personally believe that if children are educated on issues such as violence, early pregnancy, crime etc. they would be able to know the consequences of such evils and thus avoid them. This kind of method pays off much more than a mere preventive method.»
«violence effect the psychological, physical and social growth of the future citizens.»
«Quality learning should probably be the first, because early learning shapes a child’s future: improved physical environments is important as well, a child needs space, comfort and light to do his or her homework. Lastly, though also important is reducing a child’s exposure to violence, which can shape his beliefs into what he will become as an adult, the more peaceful and loving upbringing, obviously the better.»
«Nutrition,nutrition,nutrition in the early years is the key to build strength, stamina, endurance and intellect to improve their quality of life.»
Please VOTE AND COMMENT.
10. Child-Friendly Schools Manual
This manual, from May 2009, is a resource on the child-friendly schools (CFS) approach developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) through a network of international and national partners. The model is presented in this book as a holistic instrument for pulling together a comprehensive range of interventions in quality education. The CFS framework promotes child-seeking, child-centred, gender-sensitive, inclusive, community-involved, environmentally friendly, protective, and healthy approaches to schooling and out-of-school education worldwide.
Published in December 2009, these early child development materials are designed to introduce the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Each picture in the colouring book represents an article of the Convention.
This September 2009 book reports on the findings of the European Union (EU) Kids Online project. It is written as a resource on the changing internet environment to provide an account of how children currently use the internet in Europe. It includes such topical issues as social networking, risky contacts, parental mediation, and media literacy, among others.
13. Hey Mum, that’s Me on the Radio!
This booklet discusses ABC Ulwazi’s production and distribution of educational programmes for and by children and young people to community radio stations in South Africa. Through the Khuluma uKhululeke – Speak Free project, teenagers in local communities to develop the skills necessary to speak to and interview children under 9 about their views on early childhood development and on children’s rights issues. ABC Ulwazi’s programmes are also designed to talk to caregivers about children’s rights and to motivate them in their work with children.
See also:
The following archived issues of The Drum Beat and The Soul Beat provide additional information on efforts to reduce violence in young children’s lives:
The Drum Beat 519 – Gender-Based Violence Communication
The Drum Beat 517 – Child Rights Communication
The Soul Beat 159 – Eliminating FGM/C and Changing Social Norms
The Soul Beat 145 – Protecting Children’s Rights in Africa
This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.
The Drum Beat is the email and web network of The Communication Initiative Partnership – ANDI, BBC World Service Trust, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Calandria, CFSC Consortium, CIDA, DFID, FAO, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano, Ford Foundation,Healthlink Worldwide, Inter-American Development Bank, International Institute for Communication and Development, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, MISA, PAHO, The Panos Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation,SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, WHO, W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Chair of the Partners Group: Garth Japhet, Founder, Soul City
Executive Director: Warren Feek
The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to drumbeat@comminit.com
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
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