The Global Summit on Childhood - Vancouver, April 2014

"Doing good" requires us to "get out of the

way"

Kate McAlpinekate@katemcalpine.org

The Global Summit on Childhood - Vancouver, April 2014

Let me tell you a story

When I realized what “getting out of the way” meant

The Global Summit on Childhood - Vancouver, April 2014

Dominant development discourse

Positions children in Tanzania as being• Powerless victims of poverty, • Discriminated against, • Hungry, • Under-stimulated, and• Unsafe.

• Many organisations aim to ‘do good’. But accept this picture with little scrutiny, and design their programs based on these assumptions about children.

Trying to get out of the way in a recent Tanzanian study

• Commissioned by the Children in Crossfire.

• Sought answers to the question “How do young Tanzanian children experience care?”

• Aimed to truly hear children's voices.• Data collected from 96 children on the

brink of entering primary school.• Participated in structured play

activities & semi-structured interviews.

• 95 adult care-givers participated in semi-structured interviews.

• A content analysis of emerging themes.

We learnt that we should be optimistic

• The majority of Tanzanian parents are dedicated, conservative and caring attachment figures for their children.

• Children live in a rounded social world.• They say that they enjoy spending

time at home, • They receive praise from many, • They feel safe and secure outside the

confines of their parents. • Suggests that depictions of young

Tanzanian children as living in a state of ‘generalised insecurity’ (Wuyts, 2008) lacks nuance and hides a more complex picture, that deserves closer analysis.

But outliers are a cause for concern

• These outliers had • Little knowledge or memory of when

their children began to talk,• Thought that there was no

punishment that was inappropriate for a young child,

• Thought it appropriate for the child to do domestic work at nine months,

• Had neither hopes nor fears for their child, and

• Reported that no-one gave the child play things, and that they do not play with their child.

Implications for action

• Civil society actors need to consider• Shifting from the current concern

with large-scale interventions towards high quality, tailor-made interventions that focus on the behavioral change of these outliers.

• Building our own capacity to facilitate the inner development of people who already have few inner resources and few social safety nets.

• We should have built in time to internalize the seriousness of ethical dilemmas & to practice reflexivity.

• We needed to better manage the multiple parties involved and to align expectations, perspectives and skills.

• We should have gone slow so as to better listen, think deeply and to continually ask questions about our posture.

• Lesson learnt: The greater the number and the more diverse the people involved, the greater the amount of time and attention needs to be paid to building a shared understanding, commitment and practice to reflexive, ethical research.

How could we have got out of the way even better?

The Global Summit on Childhood - Vancouver, April 2014

We can only do good by understanding how those we hope to help make meaning of their own experience.

This demands that we become conscious of our own perspectives, set them aside and “get out of the way”

Only then can we better hear the voices of children.

We can only do good by understanding how those we hope to help make meaning of their own experience.

This demands that we become conscious of our own perspectives, set them aside and “get out of the way”

Only then can we better hear the voices of children.