 Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everyone. I think it's time for us to get started. My name is Mark Canaverra. I am one of the directors of the Karen Protection of Children or CPC Learning Network at Columbia University. And we're just delighted to partner with the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, the International Institute for Child Rights and Development, Artilution, and COVID-19 to bring you today's webinar on Children's Voice, Maintaining and Adapting for Safe Child Participation during COVID-19. Just a few housekeeping items before we get started. This webinar is being recorded and it will be shared afterwards, but your individual names will not be included. So please do know that. You will see on the Zoom box both a chat and a Q&A function. I think most of us know these fairly well now, but this, please use the chat box for general conversation, but as you have questions as they arise during the various presenters, presentations, please put those in the Q&A and we'll be keeping an eye on those and bringing them to the presenters at the end of the webinar. It's packed to our agenda today. We will first hear from Michael Copeland, the coordinator of the Child Protection Area of Responsibility of the Global Protection Cluster. And then we will hear from three different sets of speakers. First, from Artilution. Secondly, from the International Institute for Child Rights and Development. And finally, from the COVID-19 project and I will introduce each set of speakers as they come up. But first, I'm not sure if we do have Michael with speaking capacity yet. Michael Copeland, the coordinator of the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, a long-standing leader in the Child Protection and Emergencies community. And we're delighted to have him kick us off today. Michael, over to you. Hi, Michael. Just checking you're able to hear me okay. Just great and we see you as well. Welcome. Super. Thanks. Thanks so much and welcome everyone. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, wherever you are. Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time and as Mike said, welcome to this session that forms part of the Global Protection Cluster annual forum. Typically, we'd have many, many people getting together over the years in Bangkok. This year we're doing that remotely, which allows many more of us to connect with many more advantages. Interesting. At the outset, I want to say that whilst today's session is co-hosted by CPIOR and CPC, who we're delighted to be with, the webinar is relevant for all of protection on child participation, and I would argue beyond. So great for those of you who are joining us from Child Protection and also great for those of you joining us more broadly from protection and also other sectors. I'm just going to spend a few minutes by way of background how we got to today and why we're here. I mentioned those global forums and over the last years when we bring together child protection coordinators from across the globe, that gives us an opportunity to hear from them. What are the challenges and how can we support them better in doing their job? What we've been hearing is that they have been challenged around child participation and of course that's really a problem, because if we think about the job of coordination groups, which is to describe child protection risks, what's the situation for children, and then to set the direction for the response at an interagency level and indeed to raise funding. Not having children's voice and participation as central to that really weakens our position to do the best job possible. So we've heard over the last couple of years that at an interagency level, despite there being some great country examples, we're not at a systematic level of doing good participation. So some great examples here and there, but not happening systematically and not happening throughout the work of coordination groups. So a few reflections on what we've heard about why not and of course that's going to depend on the people who are providing the services but and the context, the nature of the emergency, for example, is that an armed conflict or an emergency caused by climate change, for example. But one of the chief responses that we've heard is that there's a fear of being tokenistic in terms of participation or perhaps doing harm in our efforts to foster participation and that despite there being so much guidance, we may not have the tools and materials that help us with the how to, as it were. And I wonder in hearing those reflections if somehow participation has become something extra and as such, despite having so many programs and expertise in areas that seek to understand and remedy the situation of children, for example mental health and psychosocial support, we do not take our expertise and apply it to ensure that participation is part of our regular work. So maybe it's become something or seen as something extra and not integral. I also wonder and am struck by how our language has changed over the years and I hear more and more references, for example, to children and adolescents or children and youth. And when we think of participation, I wonder if it reflects a growing sense or a narrative of seeing children as under 12. And in some ways does that heighten our fear. And of course we'll hear today and see from the materials that there are a range of options to foster participation that are age and developmentally and for the situation appropriate. And participation helps in a way remind us of the different stages and phases of childhood. As a footnote, I am concerned when I hear those references about minors. It worries me on a number of levels, especially as it seems to facilitate states undertaking actions against children, which might be illegal. Anyway, that's for another bigger separate conversation perhaps. To participation, the benefits are so numerous from getting a better understanding of the situation, gathering insights in how to design a response, getting feedback on the quality and effectiveness of the work that we do. It also helps to ground our work so we don't become too detached or abstract. I think it also gives us energy and enriches our passion for work and working with children. I was reflecting on some examples working in border areas with South Sudan and talking with groups of children about the risks that they would see and prioritize and rank using some very old tools. And the examples we heard from boys about the concerns they had for their sisters being married and taken back across the border to South Sudan, or hearing from children about which parts of the program they found most useful and least useful simply by placing tokens in different containers. These moments I felt brought clarity to our accountability to what was being said. In that moment we become clearer in our accountability to those children. Of course participation has always mattered but as we potentially lose more contact with children who are facing heightened risks, we need to re-examine how we ensure participation during COVID-19, which is why we're here today. In response to those concerns over the last few years and the current situation and gaps, the work that we've undertaken with partners including the CPC in this area has been I think a great example of colleagues coming together organically from a range of different backgrounds to help focus on the how-to. As we'll hear today from the great range of speakers, I want to encourage you to really get involved, make use of the materials and connect with others around your experience. I'm really looking forward to today's session and invite you to get involved. With that Mark, back to you and thanks so much everyone for joining us. Thank you, thank you Michael for those wise words and I could not agree more about how you know meaningfully engaging with and allowing children to have their voice in programs just grounds them but also then for those of us who are adults working with them brings us like you said energy, enthusiasm and accountability. I think it's absolutely the right word so thank you for for bringing that all together so nicely. We're going to start with a quick poll right now. This poll is going to ask you how comfortable you feel incorporating children's voices in your work. Sonya, if you could please launch the poll for everyone. Just take a few seconds it's a one-question poll. I see there are 127 of you and the numbers steadily mounting so it's nice to see so many people interested in this and we just want to get a sense of how comfortable you feel. So I'm going to count down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Sonya, let's see the results here. Okay so half of you already feel very comfortable incorporating children and youth voices into your work. Another third to 40 percent of you moderately and then about 10 percent somewhere between slightly somewhat and not at all so hopefully what this webinar will do for those of you who are very comfortable incorporating children's and youth voices into your work is to provide you with some new ideas and tools for how to do that so thanks for taking that poll. In terms of new tools I'm very excited to present our first speaker today Joel Bergner from the Organization Artolution and Joel is a community muralist and the CEO and co-founder of this organization. His collaborative projects for murals have spanned 12 years in 25 countries we will but he also has a background in working with youth who have faced trauma and we will put his full biography in the chat box for you to read. In the meantime I will turn it right over to Joel whose work I'm sure you will be very excited to hear about. Over to you. All right thank you so much and thanks everyone for being here. As Mark said my name is Joel from Artolution and I will be talking about our programming generally around the world as well as during COVID our COVID specific programming so I'm going to share my screen here okay hopefully you can see that if not let me know. All right so Artolution we are a non-profit organization based in New York but we work in various parts of the world which I'll talk about and we focus specifically on working with vulnerable young people and using the art forms included in public art so we create collaborative community arts together with a variety of different people in the community families children artists and this is for the purpose of strengthening resilience and really creating a platform for young people to be able to shape their own narratives and to tell their own stories in a public space and so this mural here brings together girls who are both Syrian refugees as well as local Jordanian girls in Amman Jordan on the outside of a girls school and so you can see this is kind of our our trademark style in which you can step back and see a large image and that image was created by the young people themselves they decided on the theme they decided on what would be the main images but also they all got to create their own smaller works throughout the entire piece and so in this way everyone gets to come later and say hey you know this was my part here and that's what this means to me individually but also as a community we've come together to create this work of art and we work in many different humanitarian situations including many refugee camps so for example in Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps in Jordan our biggest program is in Azraq and this is for Syrian refugees and so you know as we know many of these locations are very there's a lot of challenges and there is not a lot of color as you can see from this photo here and so what we do is bring together community members to create color create beauty create stories through public arts and you can see here that you know we bring together many different members of the community of many different ages and we focus a lot on capacity building locally so that all of our local artists who are leading this program in the Azraq camp all come from Syria themselves they are all residents of the camp themselves and throughout these artworks something that we really our methodology really focuses on is that in each section on each day each workshop the young people are exploring different themes that are important to them so for example on day one the theme might be what is your vision for the future of your community of your life for your family and let's envision that through imagery maybe on day two the theme would be who is someone who supports you in your life who is a person who is important to you like a teacher or a family member and then let's learn how to create a portrait of that person in this public space and so on each day we have different themes that create these platforms to explore their lives and issues that are important to them so an example of one of our lead teaching artists this is Samir here and he is from Syria he's one of the leaders in our Azraq program and so he is someone who fled from the war he was conscripted into the army and did not want to serve in the army because he said that he would have to kill civilians and so he chose to flee he was shot three times and survived as he fled he took his wife and young children and crossed the border into Jordan and was basically in a situation as so many people are of being stuck of having nothing in his life and having this trauma that he's been dealing with however something that really inspires me about Samir and many of our lead artists is that he despite the challenges that he has faced he is someone who is giving back and has a program that he is one of the leaders of that goes all throughout the year working with thousands of children in Azraq camp creating public arts and building healthy relationships and so these are the kinds of local leaders local artists that Artilution supports and we also in the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh we have a program there and these different programs are through a variety of partners which I'll share at the end for example UNICEF and UNHCR are two of our big partners and one thing that we also do is make sure that half of our artists teams are women and so in a place like the Rohingya camps which is a very traditional society there aren't a lot of opportunities for women to have leadership positions or even to have jobs at all and so all of our artists are paid these are all their livelihoods this is the way they feed their families but also this is a way for them to learn how to become community leaders and so Rifa here who is one of our lead artists there she is now considered a leader in her community and she's someone who has this opportunity to give back and to form these very important healthy strong positive relationships with those in her community and the children that she serves now we we also you know I think resilience is such an important thing that I think the arts have a strong role to play in and so this is a way for young people and children to say you know we have many labels placed on us by society and by others and they're mostly negative labels but we are going to create our own labels we are going to shape our own narrative and think about what we think our identity actually is what we want our identity to be and we that's a big part of the approach of artilution's programming and this is something that as we know somebody's self identity somebody's narrative about their own life really can shape their future because it really determines what they think and what they feel they can do also in the South Sudanese refugee settlement of Bidi Bidi this is in northern Uganda we have another large program there and so many of our artworks this one here it was something that the children said they wanted to explore the the relationship between different family members between different generations and really this idea of creating a new community because they have lost the communities where they initially came from and so many of our artworks are you know like this one here is on the outside of a school and so people are coming by and they are experiencing these artworks every single day in their life and I think that's really such a powerful thing for a young person who you know who now has this chance to say I am going to contribute to my community not later when I'm an adult but right now as a child I have this opportunity to participate to contribute to be someone who is making a difference and people are coming by even the adults are coming by and say good wow this is amazing good job but tell me what your art is about we always have big final presentations that are public in which everyone can come by and experience that artwork and hear from the young artists themselves these are our artists in Uganda and we bring together artists from different ethnic backgrounds our teaching artists here in Uganda are from both Uganda and South Sudan but also represent a variety of different ethnic groups in those regions and that's something I think that you know when you have a lot of tensions when you've had conflict and at times violent conflict between different ethnic groups it's so important both for the team of teaching artists as well as the children that we work with to represent many different groups and come together in a common mission to create these works of art in Colombia we work with both Venezuelans that have come in in recent years as well as internally displaced Colombians and those affected by the conflict in Colombia and so this is one of our murals it's in Agua Blanca which is in Cali and this was one that the youth said you know we're not even able to walk a couple blocks down because we have these invisible borders as we call them and you can be killed you can be robbed simply for crossing into another faction's territory and so this mural was an exploration of that idea of how can we break down these barriers how can we come together in unity and you see that the children created many small characters throughout the larger faces and those all represent the various people from the diversity of groups that live in that community now beyond mural arts we also have other art forms that we lead and this would include photography and film we also do what's called a program called the found instruments sound instruments and what this is is that we create community sculptures in which the young people take garbage trash you know repurposed objects and turn them into a sculpture so all these objects on this mural here are all different trash that had been thrown out and that they repurposed and each one is also a percussion instrument so you can come and actually play this sculpture with drumsticks another important program for us is performance and so we have both dance and theatrical performances this one wants to get this is still in colombia and aqua blanca and in this community just like the murals the young people are the ones who are deciding what their performance will be about what the story will be about and what are the themes that are really important to them so this one is about the violence in the community and it has a strong message near the end of the of the production about the piece that they would like to build in their community we do also work in the united states and we work a lot with asylum seekers and other young people who have experienced trauma and who are vulnerable so this mural in new york which was created by asylum seekers this was one you see there's all these little characters throughout the mural and this is one where we brought in augmented reality and using animation to bring some of these characters to life so this character for example i i just love kids art and i love these stories that the that the youth come up with for these characters so this one was by a girl named christelle and she's from hundur she's 14 years old and she said my character is a baby but my baby is a thousand years old and when she was when she first was born she was born of demon parents who didn't love her and that's why you see these wings on her back but she rejected that and she said i i do care about love and i want love and i want to spread love and so she went throughout the world and had this magical baby rattle which she would use to spread love and peace throughout the world and if you see you can use a device such as a cell phone and when you walk up to the mural you will actually see the animation that christelle came up with for her character so this mix of technology and community art has really brought us to the our current virtual bridges program which has really taken off especially during the covet era and so this is something where we bring together young people young artists as well from different countries and this is i think just beyond covet also i think it's just amazing you know to see them interact with each other learn about young people like themselves in other cultures and other social contexts but who have gone through some of the same challenges in life so we we guide them through the creation of characters like the one that i just described this is a big fundamental part of our virtual bridges program they learn how to use different characteristics you know what is the origin story of your character what is the superpower and the weakness of your character all is a way to explore you know not only fiction this is fiction but it's a way to explore some real topics as well i think that's one of the great things about creating characters is that you can explore real things that might be difficult to actually talk about but explore them through play and through creativity so this is an example of a drawing and then a digital work of art we also teach digital arts and so they can explore their characters through that they can explore their characters as well through 2d animation so they learn how to do their own simple animation and we create collaborative works and so this is a work that was created with youth in india maritius and brazil they were all teenage girls who had experienced homelessness and who had experienced the the street life and all of them came together with these characters and created this collage and this is another collage created by youth in uganda italy and the united states and it's just i think so interesting to see all the different styles and all of it coming together within one piece and these are the participants that created that piece and something that we do with them as well is storytelling so this is just a sample slide of our presentation that we do with them where they learn about what is a setting what is a protagonist what is a narrative art what is a plot you know all the fundamentals of storytelling and they actually learn to tell a story together so each member of the group goes around and they each tell a different part of the story at the end they have created one collaborative story and then we take those stories and the young participants create different works of art for example a comic book that explores their story also for both stories as well as the characters they create 3d versions using clay and so in this way they start thinking about how to create a 3d worlds and then how to animate those worlds so this one this is the one the group from india maritius and brazil the girls who had lived on the street they actually created their own collaborative animation work so this features the clay animation created by the girls in three different countries who never met in real life don't speak the same language but yet have been able to come together and create this animation piece together and then at the end we always have a big public celebration in this case a virtual public celebration where people can come and hear from the youth themselves and see their works another way that we explore these characters is through masks and through costume making through performance and so they can take their characters and explore them through these different mediums and actually embody their character through these costumes this is that that same group of young girls I was talking about and this is their costumes and their masks that they've created and they made a collaborative video where they are all interacting with one another through the use of a soccer ball or football so you can see that they have made this video where it appears that they're each throwing the football from one to the other they get to dance they get to express themselves you have to kick it from one to the other and at the end they have this final work where they it really symbolizes how they've come together and lastly we are also exploring virtual reality art making as a way for young people to first learn about technology but also to be able to connect in virtual spaces and I think all of these different ways of connecting is something that promotes social inclusion these are young people who obviously feel excluded they feel isolated especially during time the time of COVID and so this is a way for them to to come together and feel included and so this project here this was one example of that with young people in Columbia and in Brooklyn New York all vulnerable youth and coming together this was actually right before COVID started so that's why you're seeing them actually you know together in person but they have learned to create virtual art together and so this was a very very you know really fun and fascinating experience for them to learn about each other and to create art together and lastly I just want to say thank you so much to all of our partners this work with Artilution you know it's only made possible because we partner with some really incredible humanitarian organizations and foundations around the world for our different programs and you can find out more on our website which is artilution.org okay I'm going to stop sharing now thank you all right thanks everyone thank you so much Joe we already have a couple of questions that have come in for you but we'll punt those to the end but it's just I kept having a smile on my face watching this it's so nice to see um color and creativity um and I as you were talking all I could think about was if if we were doing this from a highly technical child protection point of view we would be reducing all of this to very boring terms like protective factors and risk factors and psychosocial support so just to hear you describe this in in very um plain and straightforward language but that really conveys the creativity was was really a joy I also loved how you you know noted that the art making is it has intrinsic value in and of itself and also can be a great conversation starter between children themselves and especially between children and adults in their community who then are you know encouraged to ask them about what they're drawing and the last thing is that I've been in discussion with child development experts recently and this notion of helping children to think of their superpowers is something that really can have some strong psychosocial support so all of those examples were just um really inspiring and and thank you so much for for bringing them to us um we are going to turn now to um uh the International Institute for Child Rights and Development which has been developing a set of tips and tools for uh safely and ethically engaging children uh during COVID-19 and especially trying to frame that guidance in a way that helps uh those of us working with children and youth to dive into into to move through examples and small activities into deeper and more meaningful partnerships uh the people this is work that the child protection area of responsibility came to us at the beginning of COVID-19 and said our partners are having real difficulties reaching out to children how can we get some ideas and tools into their hands fairly quickly um I think the world has evolved in many ways but we are still in the early days of this pandemic sadly and and are also hopeful that the tools which will be coming soon will still be useful the two that we'll be hearing from are um Laura Wright who is the director of participatory methodologies at IICRD uh and Vanessa Curry the executive director you can read their full biographies in the chat box uh and with no further ado I'm just delighted to present uh Laura and Vanessa over to you thanks so much Mark for the kind introduction we're really happy to be here with you today to introduce the guide moving towards children as partners in child protection in COVID-19 um my as Mark said we'll be speaking with you today from IICRD and we would like to start by acknowledging our co-authors um Yana Mayaskaya uh Helen Beach both of who are on the call as well today the webinar today and Lindsay Rogers of course Mark to yourself for all the support and guidance as we have moved through so to give you just a quick overview of what we're going to be talking about today and we are going to start by looking at IICRD and then move into talking about some of the objectives of the guide and overview of the modules of the guide so you get a sense of how it works key concepts that um are the underpinning of the guy and then move into talking about some creative strategies for working with children as partners in child protection during COVID-19 including sharing a sample tool or two and then we'll move through to next steps so just to tell you a bit about IICRD we're a Canadian charity a small Canadian charity that really believes that by leading with children we can transform the world um we focus on art and play and nature-based activities and our work ensuring that everything we do between adults children and elders is all in collaboration and we feel that you know there's no other way really to to move and address the challenges that were then by really working through this deep collaborative relationships are central to this work um as well as intergenerational partnerships so we're happy to be able to share um the guide with you today so as Mark was referencing at the beginning of COVID um our colleague Lindsay Rogers spent quite a bit of time reviewing hundreds and hundreds of documents that were coming out very very quickly from organizations about how children were being engaged during child protection um in COVID-19 and really what we found was a real gap in um in practical tips and tools so this is where the guide itself uh has come from is you know it's in an effort to provide practical guidance for humanitarian actors so that they can or you can strengthen children's meaningful participation in your work um the guide itself is structured into tips and tools this includes rapid tools so tools that you can implement quite quickly in five to thirty minutes with groups of children as well as longer deeper tools that span from 30 minutes to an hour and a half where you can really look at how you're beginning to engage in partnerships with young people Mark likes to describe this guide as a bit of um an iceberg where we're thinking about how we're moving a little bit more deep participation and and partnership with children so the guide itself is an invitation to move towards intergenerating gaps into what children's adults and elders all know about how we can respond and address um young people's needs uh during the pandemic so I'll hand it over to my colleague Laura to walk you through the modules okay thanks Vanessa so as Vanessa was mentioning it kind of starts um right into some rapid tools with a decision tree process to support people to look at different approaches to be able to engage young people meaningfully when we walk through five modules um so we're looking at adapting participatory tools during COVID with ways to look at remote possibilities safe distance practices that are still fun and engaging as well as online adaptations and then our second piece looks at rapid engagement of children in COVID-19 so this looks at some of the quick tools that you can use that are still meaningful and effective when there's a short moment of time to engage with young people then we move to ethics and safeguarding which is central for all aspects of the resource and we focus in on child center safeguarding and relational ethics processes we're then looking at meaningful child participation in COVID-19 so what does this really look like um what are ways that we can do this effectively and partner with young people and then the last module really gets deeper it starts to look at moving from children as partner participants to children as partners and how can we deeply and critically reflect on the ways that we engage with young people the ways that we've experienced that in our own childhood of leadership or lack of leadership um and the ways that this impacts our interactions with young people and our organizational process so uh to get us moving and reflecting for poll one we'd like everyone to think back to when you were a child and how did you feel that you were meaningfully involved by adults in your school or community um please check all that apply um and if song you're young you can pop up that would be lovely okay so we'll allow people to do this as we continue to move through and then we'll look at some your reflections of the poll and because I'm there we are lovely thank you so you can feel like as many as you would like great so as you're engaging in the poll um just to further look at children as partners and some key concepts so as the majority of you emphasized you're very familiar with engaging young people these definitions are are probably quite common to you but just to re reinforce the that we're looking here at child participation as the committee on the rights of the child so an ongoing process which includes information sharing and dialogue between children and adults based on this and and just to flag here we have get people who've highlighted you know sort of 55 percent their ideas were listened to we have half meaningful roles um much more felt supported to be creative which is really exciting to see um and then less or so around their opinions being taken into consideration and being supported so I think it's important for us all to reflect on how these life experiences affect the way that we support young people to engage maybe become more passionate or the internalized forms of youth oppression from our childhoods that then may negatively impede the ways that we support young people to engage with our own life um so just to go back to our definitions and we're also looking at the lensi model which supports space voice audience influence and these are all critical factors for effective quality meaningful participation we've introduced in this resource a new approach called the bamboo approach and this really builds on intergenerational relationship and partnership so this is moving to children as partners when we speak of bamboo we recognize bamboo is a rhizomatic construction and so that therefore it grows underneath the ground horizontally in multiple directions without one direct starting point or one significant hierarchy yet all the bamboo can grow up independently and thrive but it's all interconnected um similar to the way we look at partnerships with young people and adults we recognize it as a horizontal partnership that things can start from young people start from adults and there's different ways to engage in relations it's not a hierarchical process it's something where young people and adults are working together in partnership to foster something new and creative innovative um that supports all to thrive within this space so moving back to Vanessa who will start to walk through the key components uh at this resource thanks Laura so we wanted to share some of the um key components or key ideas behind working with children as partners in protection during COVID-19 so the first circle you can see there the yellow circles talks about safe environments and what we have seen is that as challenges increased so does our natural protectionist culture which is totally understandable as things get difficult we really want to provide protection for the young people in our lives and the ones that we work with um but often child protection supersedes children's ability to participate their right to participate in things that are important for them what we know is that children can be engaged and involved safely um and their involvement leads to often better programs and better outcomes for children themselves one of the concepts that's introduced in the guide is around child-centered safeguarding um and our colleague Helen is on the call today if anyone has questions about that um this is her concept which is a wonderful one that comes from feminist writings on safeguarding and the idea of child-centered safeguarding is that we are working in collaboration with young people to prevent harm involving children in understanding and responding to risk and safety planning um we're enabling children to play a role in their own safeguarding recognizing they know um what's going on in their own lives and they can play a central role in decision making so this first circle is really about ensuring that safety comes first but that it doesn't prevent us from meaningfully engaging young people in the work that we're doing the second circle is around support so this is the fun one it's really about amplifying child-led actions providing support and opportunities for young people to be involved but also to take the lead on things that are important to them um in many ways adults really need to get out of the way so that young people can lead and so this is really about us as Laura was saying reflecting on what we can do as practitioners to support young people whether that's um sharing resources sharing connections brainstorming ideas that supports young people to lead and to to show the way in the the final circle sustain we're looking here at how do we establish meaningful relationships and many of the tools in the guide really draw on our based methodologies um as Joel was saying because these are the things that really connect us to our own humanity and enable us to meaningfully connect with other people around us whether that's children or adults we all connect best when we're playing and exploring and and being creative and it's a really great way to to form relationships and to solidify relationships um but what's important here is that we're able to to move from um together forward into opportunities for co-learning and co-action so we're going to move into another poll here thanks Sanya so we'll just ask you to think about um children have have children partnered with your organization in activities or projects during COVID-19 and you can click yes no or I don't know or not applicable so just take a moment to share your thoughts here about what's going on in your organization during COVID while you're doing that I can move on to the next slide just to talk through now some of the tools oh we have the poll already okay so yes children are being engaged 61% of people said that children are engaged and that's really amazing um 15% are not applicable that's great it was super interesting to hear what's going on out there so back to the tools so within the guide the guide's really focused around guidance but also practical tools that you can use and when we were thinking and exploring and reading about the different context with COVID-19 is taking place we realized that we needed to have a large gamut of different types of methods of tools that could be used um within various settings and at different times depending on what was taking place with COVID-19 so the first is in person or in person socially distance tools all of the tools in the guide have an option for this online engagement we know that not everyone and not all young people have access to the internet via but for those that do um we have um included options from in Zoom social media and collaborative whiteboard spaces um we've also included some SMS surveys ensuring that data is provided back to young people so again that they can be in charge of the information um radio call-in shows community poster boards community art installations and home delivered package for adapting methodologies within the tools in the guide that you can use of course always ensuring that safety precautions are in place and those will differ in each community that you're in so to start we'll just tell you a little bit about some of the rapid tools that are included in the guide so the rapid tools are tools that for those of you who have a little bit more difficulty engaging with young people whether because of COVID-19 or different crisis um that are that the community is experiencing so these tools are shorter they're anywhere from five to 20 minutes which means they're really accessible they're very easy to use and the guide itself will explain a step-by-step process to walk you through the facilitation of each of these tools so to give you an example of one of them in head, heart and hands this is where you can really try to understand how children are thinking and feeling and what they're keen to be engaged in in rosebud and thorn this can be used as an evaluation or just a way to identify strengths uh challenges and potential areas of growth in child protection programs uh in COVID so all of these tools um are written and developed in a way for you to be able to apply them right away in your communities um with um adjustments for various age and uh disability as well back to Laura. Great thanks Vanessa so the next section this looks at some of the deeper tools and so these come out in module four and module five the first is around working with children so some of these you may be familiar with like child protection community mapping vision collages object stories and looking at the most significant change processes um but we we've adapted these as well so that there's options to do them remotely um from being an online process or sending packages to young people's homes where internet connectivity is a challenge or ideas to be able to send data so that young people can be active as well as in person ways that you can adapt these activities for safe distancing um depending on your country context another creative format I think thinking back to some of Joel's comments there's ways that young people can engage with or without words um collectively on these pieces the critical reflection activities for adults come out in the last module and this explores reflecting on our own identities and experiences in working in partnership with children so what does that mean and look like based on our lived experiences our organizational approaches and how can we shift ourselves um and really have that transformation to effectively work in partnership with young people there's a power sharing tool as well this tool is an acting scenario to look at different power relationships children and adults um in a process um and how can we reflect on what those mean for us uh as michael holliday did in the very beginning we want to create spaces for participation to become integral to our practice not as an extra or an add-on so to really be able to critically reflect an example of one of our activities is object stories so this activity invites young people and adults to take objects um they may be nature art play based and this can be outdoors this could be in the home if it's online and to use an object to explain and explore what does safety and wellness mean to someone um and sit in a circle process and share back as a collective um this can be used in different aspects of a humanitarian program lifecycle um as you can see here or in many different formats um and we recommend this activity for ages four to eighteen can be adapted it suggests thirty minutes but as any tool when we're working in partnership with young people always build an extra time um to allow for those conversations to emerge um so there's one example uh for you all now moving forward we've seen some questions pop up in that um that are looking at can we have access to this resource so thank you that's wonderful that people are interested the resource is going to be launched october to november it's in the process with the creative designer so making it interactive and user friendly for you all to be able to take forward and we'll share that link out with all the participants who signed up um and you can be able to share with others to be able to use it's also going to be pilot piloted across a few countries um and so let us know if anyone's interested um this can be done in different ways to get feedback as well um and to build a community of practice so we'd love to see a community of practice forming an online space where people can share learnings and ideas and reflections on how they're engaging young people meaningfully in um these current times of covet and in protection spaces as many as of us have seen um within covet that the protectionist culture as has enhanced um people are looking at child protection more than children's participation quite often and the right for participation is not being accessed or supported in the same way and yet we have many people who are galvanizing to effectively engage young people as partners so we want to build on that energy and create a community of practice to continue to learn and share um just to really highlight with the resource there's also an annotated bibliography and a drop box of relevant files that have been introduced during covet that people have created or once prior there's many tools that you existed prior to the pandemic that are still applicable and can be adapted and modified effectively um and then there'll be a spotlight series and I won't still Yana's thunder because she's going to share that in more detail later on but it's quite an exciting piece um to really continue to learn um from young people around the world so thank you all um if you have any questions please feel free to we'll have Q&A but you can also always reach out to Vanessa and I um we're always happy to chat and share ideas together um or check out the website Twitter or Facebook so we'll pass it back to Mark who will introduce the last um exciting session for today thank you so much Vanessa and Lauren again we have lots of comments and questions coming in already so I'm glad that people are are interested by this including a recent comment that it's great to see the emphasis on intergenerational partnerships and I think as much as we can conceptualize child participation as a set of activities um what you are leading us to do is to really think about um the power sharing that adults will need to learn how to do and of course it's never um it doesn't feel good for those who hold power to be giving it away and so I think we're often resistant to do so and we are as adults inherently more powerful than children so uh part of that journey of getting us to be willing to allow children to make decisions um is is going to be an ongoing process but I do think of this COVID-19 moment as one when um we have an opportunity like we haven't had in a very long time to do so so despite all of the pain uh the the jolt to the world is something that we can um can look to and think about and and feel to help ourselves be better practitioners who work in partnership with children so thank you for highlighting that and we also have some some more questions about the bamboo approach that we'll get to at the end we're at the hour mark and I know this is when webinar attention tends to just start its slow decline into uh into um oblivion so I want to make sure that we're attentive for our last set of presenters and then I'm sure we'll have a lively Q&A so if you're able to stand where you are just stand up give your legs a little bit of room and just kind of lean one direction lean another and then shake it out and I hope we're all back together now I'll have a seat and and introduce our last presenters here who are um Kristen Hope and Konstantinos Papachistou Kristen Hope has been working in research and advocacy for children's rights for over a decade you can read her biography in the chat and Konstantinos is studying politics and international affairs at the University of Warwick and is the founder of Greece's first online think tank for teenagers teens for Greece and I would love to hear from you Konstantinos how you say teens for Greece in Greek thank you so much for coming to share the COVID under 19 initiative with us which really was one of the earliest pieces to start moving as the pandemic spread around the world so we're really excited to see how it's evolved several months later over to you Kristen and Konstantinos thank you so much Mark hello everyone I'm just gonna share my screen um can can everyone see my presentation yep super okay so hello I'm Kristen Montaldism I'm glad to be here today hi and my name is Konstantinos and I'm also from COVID under 19 and I'm so glad to be here and I would also like to start from something that Laura said accidentally really reminded me of something that my grandfather used to say and it's the bamboo approach but my father had a different word for it so he basically said that a good parent is one that will plant the tree that will provide the shade for the grandchildren and I think that's something that resonates with the work of COVID 19 and the idea of responsibility especially for the future and especially in the times we're currently living in I think that COVID 19 is definitely a generational issue I mean in a way it's changed the way we see things it changes everything the way we live the way we work the way we communicate and the way we even meet our friends and family I know that you can ask ourselves especially those that grew up in the past decades the 80s and 90s the 2000s how did you see your future back then you possibly saw it in a positive way but I think that's not the case currently for this generation especially with climate change and COVID currently threatening our future and the thing is we still haven't seen the full effects of it only in 2020 1.6 million children around the world were affected by school disruptions well an additional 23.8 million children may drop out or not have access to school next year due to the pandemic's economic impact in reality the coronavirus has halted the progress we made in human rights and may take us back to square one the necessary lockdown measures may lead to an unprecedented economic crisis that may even result to a lost generation according to the World Bank in their more optimistic report COVID 19 will push an extra 71 million people into extreme poverty and we still haven't seen the full effects of it and I think the group that is they'll be more affected by this children especially they have to live with the consequences of it currently a lot of them have missed school a lot of them have missed education a lot of them might even have seen their haven't seen their friend or the family for months and it's definitely scary time in a very uncertain time and now we're discussing about the post-COVID world about the new educational measures the new way we live our lives but children are not consulted especially as they'll be the ones that will live this life and I think it's definitely wrong that children should be consulted especially in matters that directly affect them for example education or universities the time that children have been consulted really I mean politics in generally made a lot of mistakes as humans because we assume things of politics and soon what children might need for education they assume what they might need for the environment they assume what they might need for for their future but they will never ask directly and I think that's why we're trying to change with COVID 19 so please the next slide so in reality what COVID 19 is it's an ethnicity that aims to unite children and adults from all over all over the world and combine them together with governments with NGOs with the third sector to create the post-COVID world that will reflect what children truly want it's an ethnicity for children but also with children children have also been involved with how throughout the design have also worked closely with COVID 19 and we've also worked with different policy makers professionals and even government I think that's one of the key points of COVID 19 that we are in a way a living example of how we can work with children governments and everyone else NGOs the third sector schools even and now I'll pass the microphone to Kristen to explain more about the process and different phases as an initiative thanks so much Konstantinos and thank you for that really powerful introduction because I think that as much as we can also theorize about where we are right now I think at least listening to you and it reminds us that this is still a very you know this is a live reality that we're all sharing in different ways and obviously COVID does impact us all in different ways but it's still very much a visceral reality that we confront and therefore part of that is also like and what do we do with this reality you know how do we how do we try to deliver on some of our promises to children and so as Konstantinos said we we got together as a group of organizations NGOs UN agencies child-led organizations local international organizations actually can see the list of partners here so and academics as well so really a huge group of of individuals putting in groups and organizations putting their heads together trying to think about what can we do together to make sure that children's rights be heard as upheld during the pandemic and in responses to the pandemic so you know myself working at Saldiz we reached out across our network and and really brought together this incredible group of organizations of coalitions of again of academics and UN agencies we've had incredible support from the United Nations special representative to the secretary general and violence against children and and her team and she's and again it's incredible to have the support that that can ensure that whatever's coming out of this initiative is also that states are at the are listening as well and and similarly our lead academic partner Queen's University Belfast has played a crucial role in ensuring that academic rigor is upheld in in all of the components of the initiative and then we have you know incredible amount of you know other partners including you know ICRD who's here on the call today's local organizations others and proteins for world which is um Constantino's organization so really a big alliance um to to really take this work forward um I am I wanted to share today a little bit about you know what have we done in COVID-19 and also how child participation has taken shape at each phase because really as as as Constantino said what we've tried to do with this initiative is really to make sure that children um and and younger people like Constantino's are really involved at each different step um so so what has that looked like for us um you can um for example look at the different phases of the initiative so as early in April we got together with um the partners and essentially we decided that it would be very important to try to capture children's experiences of the pandemic um and then in order to that to do that we wanted to devise and design a survey um in order to ask children about their experiences but we also we we wanted to do that with children so um um so we we we asked children we asked children you know what would you like to ask other children um and we integrated those responses into our um our formulation of the survey um and um and we also um we did um integrate you know we piloted the language of the survey as well with children and we also um you know really used that to hone in on specific questions um you know reflecting on um the ethical guidance that we all adhere to around you know upholding do no harm as a principle of research when we're doing research with children but um we really wanted to make sure that we were you know um adhering to this and and so we we we we did that by um piloting the language of different questions with children and asking them to to to let us know you know does is this uh the way of asking this question triggering for you or you know how does it make you feel or do you have any suggestions about the way we can modify the language and this was particularly done for example around questions pertaining to safety and violence because on one hand we you know it's important to understand you know how children are experiencing this moment um in terms of you know their exposure to violence in an online or offline environment but at the same time we need to ask the questions in a way that don't do harm and so part of the solution was going back to children and asking them to engage with us about that and that was very um a very fruitful process um and we also had um um young people so like Konstantinos who's 18 and some of his peers involved in our actual steering groups and so Konstantinos um uh is coordinating the communications work and he will speak about that a little bit um but he's also managing the social media channels of the initiative and there's been um and he will talk about that as well so so when it came to then rolling out the survey um globally um we um we we ensured that also children could be involved but throughout the whole while that they had the support of the organizations that they were working with to ensure things like confidentiality and informed consent were being upheld as well because obviously we never want to we we will not compromise on the the ethical provisions um and then so so that was over the summer we we we rolled out the survey and currently we're in phase three which is um which is a process of um analyzing all of the data so um I'll talk about this in a bit but we received 26 000 responses of children aged 8 to 17 years old and it was it's an incredible um quantity of data but also it's um it's very unique because we are now um involving children in making meaning of that data you know of interpreting that and in order to do that we're building their skills in in uh qualitative and quantitative data analysis um we're also building their skills in um different areas so um so in related to communications so for example in blogging or related to advocacy how to design advocacy messages because at the end of this the objective is that you know um children who've been involved in this initiative um can also um you know eat their participation supports them in their own ambitions in terms of child rights advocacy in their own environment um so we're running virtual camps global virtual camps currently well we have about 85 children from across the world registered and these are being run in English and um with Spanish interpretation um and um you know to build children's skills in these areas and the the the process is the you know the objective the result of all this process is that next month in October we will be disseminating and launching the results of the survey um so um you hopefully all of you who are on this call will receive you know a little bit more information about that when when we've got things nailed down but essentially what we wanted to show you is that the whole um through every step of the way we've been um involving children um and trying to do that in a way that is um is based on their own um expectations of what involvement in global advocacy can mean and how it reinforces their roles um at local or national level um so for example just a few examples of how we've been doing this I did speak about this you know when we were designing the survey we asked children you know question a that you know we asked children if you had to ask other children about how they're feeling about their lives right now what would you be asking them what questions would you be asking other children and so we integrated those the answers to some of those questions in this phase it was 270 children from 26 countries and we integrated those answers with other kind of you know expert answers and and the rights based methodology that we were using to design the survey similarly um and this is a photograph of Laura Wright who has just given her an excellent presentation um Laura uh conducted last week um a session with children on how to analyze qualitative data so she was talking about you know using child friendly techniques for you know coding and um clustering responses and again children will take that methodology and then apply it to the qualitative data that we have collected during the survey um so that they so that when we are sharing the the results that we're also sharing children's meanings not just adult meanings um and so yes I did speak about the survey but just to recap we it was um you know an online survey in 28 languages plus an easy read version for children with disabilities um but what was also very important about the methodology is that because we were very mindful of the digital divide and we're very mindful of the ways in which the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities and so we also provided a facilitators pack for frontline protection workers such as psychologists or social workers who are you know we're continuing to um you know adapt to their new realities of lockdown or of confinement but still trying to provide services to children whether it was remotely or whether it was you know in a in a face-to-face environment but with social distancing um we you know supported them to be able to also administer the survey so that we made sure that you know internet access wasn't a um you know a barrier in in in accessing the survey and um and yes it is it is to date the largest global survey of children's experiences during covid so it's it's you know quantitatively it's it's it's it's it's it's unique but it's also qualitatively unique because it is the only survey that was designed with children that is being analyzed with children um and um and it uses a rights-based methodology so it's looking at how children experience their rights during the pandemic um and um and looking at this children's experiences plus um there we've asked children you know what would you like to tell governments about about what what should be done differently um and then just another point to mention is that we've tried as much as possible with the the wide range of partners that we've been working with to um to ensure that there are linkages with existing research projects so such as the global kids online project of some of you might be familiar with and also a new project which is about to launch which is called the covid 4p log which is being led by the university stratclad and pathfinders initiative which is basically trying to roll out a um an app for child protection workers um um multi also um different people working in the fields of um policy and practice related to children so it's quite it is actually multi-sctoral it's not just protection it's also includes education and health but the idea is to capture um you know practitioners and policymakers experiences of decision making in the pandemic and what we're doing is we are um also you know um feeding back through the app children's experiences of the pandemic that we've gathered through the survey in order to create that sort of dialogue um so so it's all quite exciting that's again with the the beauty of having you know such a incredible group of partners enables us to think about how we can strategically um uh channel the findings to have most impact so Konstantinos you've been involved in this um what's it meant for you how's it yeah well i would love to hear from you about your involvement your reflections yeah thank you very much i think covid 19 definitely has been great especially that there are many things that i definitely agree with i mean me personally i'm a great believer in stories and human interaction um and i know that's one thing we've been doing with governor 19 especially the survey um for example if you go to our social media page and christin mentioned that we're doing uh the communications work we'll have a lot of stories from uh i know the most children that have posted statements about um the way they've experienced the pandemic and i think that's so powerful for example i have a 14 year old girl from zambia who said i feel they need to work more on their right education seeing that i live in a rural community as it is hard to access internet and it's definitely a challenge to learn online and i think that's something we have to look uh i mean sorry i meant uh yeah and it is definitely great to see how different um children although they may be facing definitely severe consequences they're getting in a way more willing to change things and they're getting more they realize the power of their voice and i think that may be something positive we get out of covid 19 and especially as the digital age continues i know currently it's very difficult um to i mean in developing countries actually below 50 percent of the population has access to internet that's something definitely to work on and especially now with education that is online it may be a struggle for a lot of people especially even in the u.s i was reading on the news that a lot of children don't have access to education they're not able to attend their online classes and these inequalities are very deepening especially now with economic consequence of covid and covid 19 is so broad in um in its idea because we're going to have different phases starting from the survey but we're trying to look at how different children have experienced across the globe because covid 19 has been so different different countries for example um in the uk town i have experienced different from italian zambia or another country and i think that's something great because we look at stories we look at individuals and we look at most important experiences um something important that i got out of covid 19 is that they truly believe they truly believe in total participation and i've been involved in other initiatives even in my country the greek youth parliament um i mean it's a great as an idea to have a youth parliament but usually it's just in a way like a checklist to do it just so that we're doing child participation and it was just a five-day conference i think child participation should be a lot more than that it should be effective and it should be a continuous process and there's it should both involve adults and children it should be about international partnership it shouldn't be seen like two opposite sides it should be two sides working together and children and adults as we both live the future together i think children definitely have a transformative power we've seen recently the news um the climate change um activists we've also seen the black life matter movement in the u.s and across the globe that were mainly led by young people and children and we're definitely seeing a new movement of young people who are um who are seeing who have become more politically active and have a voice and i think that's a great opportunity for more initiatives for more countries for more governments to evolve young people because we truly should especially as they have the solutions even for some issues and even for education they have first-hand experience of how they've experienced education how they're experiencing um the changing circumstances but in terms of what i've enjoyed most about COVID-19 is speaking to people from all around the world and changing my perspective about things and understanding better about the effects that it has on people and individuals on communities and i think that's something we can get out of COVID COVID-19 it's about the changing circumstance the changing stories and mostly how we're connected as humans and what truly connects us i mean if you june and may we i was watching the news every day it was a very hard time for me especially i think most people psychologists were were in a very good state my mental health was definitely in a good state would go on the news and facebook and every day would be we'd live like i don't know like it seemed like a reality so they would count the number of deaths and we discussed this as if it was like the hunger games and i think it's way more than data and numbers people's lives should then be measured every day and that's you should stir stories with certain individuals and i think that's inspired change that inspires the people and that inspires the next generation that will move the human race forward and yeah no COVID definitely i think it's definitely devastating what has come what has come because of COVID-19 but i also think it can also be a good opportunity to reflect on the past mistakes but also reflect on what we can do better we can trust science we can listen to the right people and we can work together for a better future that will involve everyone and not just a few people so that felt about COVID-19 thanks Konstantinos and again it's so it's such a privilege i think for i speak personally but also on behalf of the initiative to be working with such engaged children and young people like yourself who also locate this participation within you know within a broader i guess philosophy and a broader vision about well what can our world become you know what do we what do we build together out of the ashes of COVID and so you know from there i just like to you know start to wrap up by saying you know some of the main points that we would like you participants in cyberspace to take away today is about you know you know right space ethical child participation particularly here we're talking about research and advocacy but that can also be in your operations it is possible even during a global pandemic and actually even before when Konstantinos and I were rehearsing he said especially during a global pandemic and it's true you know if not now then when it's of course an end in itself we are upholding children's right to be heard as as as is enshrined in the convention on the rights of the child but it's also a means to an end this is an opportunity for us to start shifting power towards some of those intergenerational partnerships that Laura and Vanessa and others have been speaking about and so i think that you know this this at least from i think it begs some questions to adults to ask themselves you know what has prevented us from enabling children to play greater roles what has enabled what has prevented us from letting go of some of the power do we understand children's motivations and ambitions to be involved in participatory initiatives and if we do then how does this inform what our approach is what do we change when we talk to children and we learn from them you know how are we changing as well how is this a dialogical you know process of transformation and and for our experiences you know putting you know you know this kind of partnership into practice it requires integrating children and young people into the decision making so integrating them into the working groups into the coordination structures into you know whatever it is the architecture or of this initiative you know let's let's make sure that children and young people are involved and at the table let's make sure that we're cultivating spaces for exchanges and connections with other children let's make sure that there are these pure connections because these are also incredibly incredibly just just positive they're a positive thing they're positive moments in as Konstantinos saying in a world which is in a context which is you know I think we're overwhelmed by the negative stories and or you know whether it's on the media whether it's our own you know grappling with our own personal experiences of the pandemic and so you know we need to stay connected connection is actually what is going to to enable us to get out of this and so it's the more that we can open up the experiences for connections between children so that they can share with each other that they can learn from each other they can build together the better we are going to be and the stronger we're going to be and that in that process it also is about thinking about how we can build their skills to also become you know more resilient or empowered or also you know agents have changed in their own right and we as adult allies are there to support them and and also there to ensure that duty-bearers are are holding true on their promises that they have made in accordance with international law and so um you know what can you do when you leave here Konstantinos what we're asking them to do yeah please follow our social media channels they're actually run by young people and even the logo has been designed uh by young persons so please follow our facebook which is um as you can see cobin on 19 our twitter and also instagram their same name um please if you have any any ideas please message us we're free to discuss anything um and please share everything if you like it yeah and let us know if you have any participatory activities or initiatives in your countries that you are looking to seek to you know amplify or to connect because it's also that it's that process of you know what can be how can we um um you know invigorate processes by you know connecting globally and then also part of what we're also trying to do with the global is then thinking how it filters back down to the local how is it that we can also replicate some of the the methodologies at global level um at local level too so um please please connect and um we look forward to um to moving this forward with you and sharing the results in october thank you so much for having us today thank you christin and konstantinos um konstantinos as you spoke i just constantly found myself nodding my head what a voice of wisdom you are and i just really appreciated you know some of the key points that you reminded us of the the need to challenge assumptions and well not to assume in the first place but to actually ask children what they are living through um and also when you said people should not be measured every day amen and i say that as a researcher and you're focused on the importance of stories and helping us to understand people's realities so it's really really appreciated and christin here you start your wrap up with you can ethically and safely engage children during this time period i think is a much needed counterbalance to much of the guidance that we're seeing come out that is telling people don't proceed with data collection if you think of it in that sense and i tend to fall on the other side of the fence that actually we will be doing poor programs that are not adapted to me if we're not doing what we can to to hear from and to centralize what children are telling us so so thank you both we are heading into the last half hour which is thankfully a big q and a and so we've got a lot of questions that are coming in already um and it may be interesting to go to gala review for all of you who are participants here which should give you a a view of many of the people who have their cams on uh the the panelists um it's at the button at the top right and the q and a will be led by um a beloved member of the global child protection community lauren bienkowski who is the global help desk focal point for the child protection area of responsibility and lauren has 13 years of experience we'll we'll put her bio in the chat box and with that over to you lauren you're muted well there we go there was going to be there was bound to be something um but anyway yes great presentations um everyone and thank you so much but we do want to utilize this time um and get right into the questions so um there for those of you who um check out there have been some answered questions already um but we had a first question from fatuma um about you know great information coming in from the different art forms um but joel and others if you want to pop in as well um if you could let us know how you use that information to design programs or to influence programs great thanks yeah thanks fatuma for that question um so what we have is is a system in which we have uh many of our teaching artists who are the facilitators of the programs are youth themselves and we have a mentorship program in which the older teaching artists can then uh you know work with the younger ones in order to uh you know teach best practices about how to work with with children um and so what we do is also is making sure that we are really engaging youth who are already active in their community i think this is a really big part of it because you have someone like for example uh we have one youth whose name is kevin ramirez and he's in agua blanca the community that i show during my presentation in columbia in cali and so this is a community that has had extreme violence and conflict and what kevin is doing as a teenager um he's currently 18 he's been doing this since he was about 15 where he leads dance programs in his community and he's been doing that for free um he he gets out there he's passionate about it it's something that he has become a leader in his community and known for this and so what we've done is we've recognized that and so he said you know kevin you're going to uh you know we'd like to give you an opportunity to to work with us to do what you're doing um share this knowledge with others also learn information from others who are doing this as well and so we had a whole program uh capacity building program that he participated in and now he is leading those programs and now this is a job for him uh through the funding that we've been able to get for his program and he is during covid we have a new a new structure for his program in which he goes out into a field people wear masks and the youth all spread out um because i know that was another question how are we doing this during covid um you know spreading out social distancing and continuing to have those dance and performance based workshops with kevin and so um so that's something that's i think uh we really focus on to make sure that we have the youth who who are already leaders in the community have that platform be able to make a career out of it and really reach many more youth um and in terms of covid keeping everyone safe both by social distancing and by leading the online virtual workshops that i uh showed in my presentation great thanks so much Joel um venessa laura did you want to jump in as well yeah so thanks so much Joel it's really exciting to hear more from your program um and within the guide as well there's ways to lots of the tools are structured so they can be adapted but there's also specific guidance on how some may be used in needs assessment and designing a program and really using the art and play approaches to effectively engage in partnership with young people to support how your programs may shape or form um and then there's other ways too that pieces could be adapted and modified so that you're engaging kind of an action research process with young people um so that they're informing and shaping the programs um within the organization venessa i don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add all right well thank you so much um to you both for answering that question um fatuma feel free to reach out in case um you'd like more information um Joel you already touched on a question around how did we adapt um for covid um and laura and venessa you also presented um on various options sms um and doing things online and and how to adapt for in person um where that is possible um anything else anyone wants to add on how you um adapted for the covid 19 situation and ensuring the physical safety and health of children um i will say one thing about the covid response is that you know the most important thing is to keep all the participants everyone involved safe and so i think you know like i said the two main ways of doing that is being able to be socially distanced outdoors as well as using technology to meet virtually but i also wanted to say that this is a an opportunity i think i mean for many of our youth you know for example leading uh projects online with girls who have lived on the streets in chennai india this was the first time that they had ever even used uh you know zoom had used many of the online platforms we were using um and doing animation you know all of these things were were new to them so in a way through because of the restrictions of covid we also really want to look at that as an opportunity um to learn new things to learn new skills to to open people up to things that they didn't have access to before and so i think you know as as terrible as covid is that's that's the way that we try to look at it to find those new opportunities great but i also just jump in really quickly with also a kind of a different anecdote kind of the going back but um but one of the when we were um in the process of trying to roll out the survey and as i said one of the one of the things that we were trying to ensure was that um frontline practitioners were able to administer the survey for children who didn't have internet access so a particular cohort of children that we work with in our programming and stoutism is children deprived of liberty so children who may be in prison or children who may be in closed institutions um and what was very interesting about that also is that um when we were um and that is working with social workers and psychologists who who are working those institutions every day and what was very interesting also you know in the context of covid that even the work in the maintaining access to those institutions was also about um uh we were able to um um the the governments in some in some countries um were requesting also that they could have access better access to basic protective PPE protective gear masks gloves and hand sanitizer so actually as part of our sort of you know you know general pro or continuing our general programming but also in order to reinforce the participation of children who you know were say deprived of liberty we were also um you know um ensuring the provision of um a PPE to um to you know institutions and um uh where um which actually you know raises the general level of sanitation for the the whole population of children so i think it can go both ways it can be as joe was saying it's no access to technology but it can also be about how through our you know um accessing different actors who are present with children can we also leverage that to promote you know hygiene practices for children that keeps everyone safe great point thanks so much christin um and so we've talked a lot about you know the physical safety and health of children um but also i think you know joe this was a great point raised by um diana that about how are we making sure that they're um that the children are kept safe emotionally and mentally um during this so i'll we'll start off with joe but then if others want to come in um on some child safeguarding practices and ensuring the mental health yeah well i think you know for us uh one thing is to make sure that we're always working with our local partners on the ground um those who have you know who are in psychosocial support and other other fields that really have an expertise in this and having them lead uh workshops so for example our team in the azerac refugee camps we we partner with unicef there and so we've been able to have child safeguarding uh workshops led by unicef for our staff um because we know that we are experts in collaborative art making in vulnerable communities but we're not experts in everything and we're not experts necessarily in um something like psychosocial support or child safeguarding so we make sure that all of our team members are then being trained in those things and also you know through the programs i think it's really important for example when we're exploring different themes in the community to to talk about you know what are your what is your vision for the future for example you know what are your your dreams and not saying something like uh you know our our teaching artists are instructed not to ask questions like you know what you know what happened to you in the country that you came from why did you have to come over to why did you end up in this refugee camp or all those types of questions they know hey if the youth wants to come up to you as a facilitator and share that information if it's something they want to discuss which they often do that's up to them um but it should definitely be on their terms when they build those healthy relationships and when they feel safe to do so with certain individuals and not something that you would just bring up with the group such as one example of the many different kind of guidelines that we have to make sure that children are feeling safe in these environments wonderful thanks joel um helen do you want to come in as well um you've done quite a bit on child safeguarding yeah i mean uh joel said it already in but we've kind of put it in the terms of relational safety uh so this is about um not being a professional counselor psychologist or anything like that but developing relational safety with uh the children that you're working with so that's kind of developing a warm trusting positive stable relationship that children can turn to and it may well be that it's um it's other kind of older street educators or art leaders that become that that person for children and we were encouraging people to to think about relational safety um because everyone's banging on about physical safety and they can the uh you know disease prevention but actually for a lot of children uh the the mental their mental welfare um is very contingent on relational state safety and uh the relationships that they develop and that they're stable and consistent um and that they can help each each other through this difficult time so that's one thing we have focused on in terms of looking at child centered safeguarding great thanks helen um we also have two questions getting a little bit more into some of the nitty gritty um but around logistics so just around the technology um for kids during covid and then also the next question on um you know how do you how many children should you engage how many how much time do you need to prepare um or opportunities or challenges identified in reaching vulnerable communities so um I will hand this question over to Joel again to start as the first question was for you um but then others please feel free to jump in great um yeah so what what I love about the question there's there's always this question of how do you get this expensive technology to refugee camps or to vulnerable communities and what's what what I find interesting about that is actually these virtual programs are much more affordable than our usual programs because the cost of uh you know some of these devices for example the stop motion animation that we do is all on you know any smartphone it doesn't have to be a very super advanced one or any kind of tablet um and so what we do is we identify specific people so in the uh for example in the uh center for street youth in Chennai in India we had certain staff members who had access to those things and so all of the youth would take turns using those devices that they had um and so even the virtual reality headsets that we use in Colombia and in Brooklyn um with those programs that we'd like to spread to other places those are only 400 each so for the price of paint for a big mural program you can buy two or three headsets and unlike the mural that actually lasts much longer right it's not just one project you can continue using those so so some of this technology actually isn't as expensive as as it may appear um the bigger issue for us has been internet access for in in remote areas and that's been really challenging and so what we've done is just you know we've talked to different tech companies we've looked at all different kinds of options and what we've noticed is two things number one is that there's a big difference between do do people not have access because they can't afford it or do people not have access because it's not available in their area often it's because they can't afford it and then we can solve that problem because that can be part of the program that can be part of the budget and we can actually send data plans directly to the devices so if there's a person with a smartphone that's going to be working with a certain number of participants and you know we can send that person you know the data package and so that's the way we can solve that in other locations we you know even if you send them internet packages they still can't get good reception and so in that case we've had to look into can we bring a modem like in the bitty bitty refugee settlement we've brought in modems from the capital Kampala that get much much better internet reception than people's phones do and so just in that particular environment that was the thing that worked and so we just we try different things we you know and in everywhere that we've worked we found at least one solution to this issue great thanks that was really useful on practical feedback um I also wanted to see if Laura and Vanessa or Kristen or Constantine want to come in on some of the other logistical issues raised by Sean sure I can start and then hand it over to others to add in and thanks for that question Sean because I think logistical challenges are very real and we all are wondering all the time how we're going to manage programs how we're going to get funding and it is more difficult to get funding typically for participation programs than it is for protection but hopefully the more conversations that we have these kinds of things will begin to change for every single activity we give the preparatory time that we'll take for facilitators as well as the time it'll take to conduct the activity but I would say for every participatory activity your planning and your follow-up is about double the time of the activity itself so if you are planning a one hour activity know that you'll probably spend at least an hour preparing and an hour in terms of follow-up just to wrap things up so we always want to make sure with donors that were very upfront about the time that it takes I would also say like to Helen's point around relational safety and building these long-term relationships with young people this takes time it's not something that is normally factored into humanitarian budgets and so if we can start to think about what does it mean to have someone who's continuously engaged with a group of young people over a period of time and have that person to have the time and ability to respond to young people's needs because if we begin to start thinking about shifting power away from only adult run programs and adult led initiatives to things that are shared it takes a lot more time because you're looking at working in partnership even if we look at working in partnership with other adults we know that it takes more time but we know that the outcome is always so much better and can really you know look to address young people's needs so much better so we hope that some of the answers that you have the specific answers around logistics will be included in the in the guide but I'll turn it over to Laura in case I missed anything there you know that that's wonderful and in that addition to us as Vanessa mentioned it's other parts are in the guide and there's some parts logistically that you know we recommend from the guides who follow local guidelines as the question around numbers participants and pieces we we have general recommendations and we know every context is different some have six people some have bubbles some have larger groups so we respect the wisdom of the people using the resource to work locally to identify what makes sense for meaningful partnerships great thanks so much Laura and Vanessa we just have one last question before we start to wrap up here and this is a question for Constantine and Kristen but others again can jump in how did you reach out to the children so you reached so many children and I think you touched on this a little bit during your presentation but if you could give us another description of how you reached out I mean I'll start and then handle with Constantinos but I mean the basic the starting point was reaching out to all of the partners so of all of those you know 30 plus partner organizations including international local NGOs working with children with existing programming it was really sort of you know reaching those networks but then another big component was the social media component so Constantinos but I don't know if you want to speak a little bit more about that it's about what kind of some of the strategies where the thinking was about that and about starting that our own channel actually Constantinos is very adamant from the beginning that we needed our own kind of standalone channels so I don't know if you want to talk about that Constantinos yeah yeah sure yeah definitely the partners were very helpful also I think that social media is a great way to reach out to many children especially between the age group of 13 to 18 because I think that's the main group that is using social media I mean in terms of COVID-19 it was a bit surprising especially our Facebook page only on the month of July we had a two million two million people engagement actually visiting our page this was quite surprising it's a very big number I mean I think that children have such a big need to express what they're feeling or what they're experiencing that if something if they look at something or if this is something on their page or visit it or if something seems interesting but also it's a matter of making it child-friendly and the best way to do it's more child-friendly is to involve young people and children in the communication process throughout the organization especially for example with Instagram with the way it works and the algorithm the way that you cannot post on only what you have to use in the image as well that's also quite useful and maybe even the colors you have to use I mean in terms of us initially we used also videos of different children that were helping with COVID-19 but also others as well because I think definitely videos are very helpful also about sharing stories but also about connecting a face to something especially for a younger age is very important great thanks so much Constantinos and Kristin really useful so we have reached the end of the the Q&A thanks so much to everyone for great questions and then to all of the panelists for your responses really useful information so now we are going to head into a final evaluation we'll do a quick evaluation of how you found the webinar how you found the information and then Mark will do a quick wrap-up for us and we'll also share some information of where you can go for if you have further questions so Mark and Sonia I'm going to hand over to you thank you we see the link for the evaluation there and we managed to keep 70 of you here for almost two hours which is a minor miracle or you can also see the link in the chat box apologies my cam was off so this is just a two question or three question evaluation shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes to fill out meanwhile we have the slide there with some of the links for the global protection cluster and the child protection area of responsibility so that website that you see there is the website at the top right is the website for the overall global protection cluster forum the global protection forum this year there are still I think a few events to come it's been going on for a while now you can check out the schedule there and if you have more questions about today's webinar there are the email addresses of the folks you can reach out to Lauren and our behind the scenes producer Yana whom you did not hear from but who was like the man behind the curtain and the Wizard of Oz doing lots of little things to make things keep running so you know the you know just in closing I realize we've had you for a very long time here but I just feel very inspired we you know six months ago felt very powerless not only because of COVID-19's expansion and the way that it changed our lives but we were all wondering how to engage children and how to reach out to them and it's just very heartening to see how far we've come and to see the way that these different initiatives are either emerging or adapting or taking shape it is really especially lovely to hear so many creative approaches because one thing we in the global humanitarian community are not great at is being creative so even though we might struggle to get our minds around how collective art making may be linked to our protection work I think it's really worth the effort to think about it because this really creative methods are obviously the way that children are going to feel excited and have lots of ideas to share so it's really it's especially exciting to see those I don't want to keep this any longer than we need to and I'm glad that we finished before our two hour mark mark please do fill out the survey and we will be sending around the recording probably next week it will also be put up on the global protection cluster and the child protection area of responsibility websites so with no further ado a big thank you to I'm probably going to forget someone here but let's see if I can remember we've got Sonia and Yana who are helping to run the show and then also we had Michael Copeland from the child protection area of responsibility Joel Bergner from our dilution Vanessa Curry and Lauren Dienkowski I'm sorry Vanessa Curry and Laura Wright from the International Institute for Child Rights and Development Kristen Hope from Terror Day Zamen COVID-19 and Konstantinos Papachistou from the same initiative and finally Lauren Dienkowski wrapping us up with the Q&A thank you so much and have a great rest of the day or evening wherever you are bye everyone thank you Mark thanks everyone thanks everyone thanks so much thanks everyone bye