1 November– By Audrey Janssen

When discussing child well-being, we often rely on expert opinions and theoretical frameworks. However, the most authentic insights come directly from the children themselves. Unfortunately, the voices of children, especially those living in underprivileged conditions, are frequently overlooked in research and policymaking. This neglect can lead to well-intentioned initiatives that fail to address children's actual needs. To bridge this gap, it's essential to directly engage with the children and understand their unique perspectives. By listening to their voices, we can gain valuable insights into their priorities, challenges, and aspirations. This information can inform more effective policies and programs that genuinely support their development and well-being.

Child participation my research project

With this in mind, I did a three-month fieldwork study in Mauritius which aimed to understand what is important in the lives of underprivileged pre-schoolers. Most importantly, children themselves were the main participants in the study. To keep the children safe and perform the research in the right way, I collaborated with a local NGO, Terre De Paix, which runs several nursery and pre-primary schools in Mauritius. Considering the importance of early childhood due to rapid brain development until five years old and the abilities of the children to participate in the research it was decided to focus on the three pre-primary locations of Terre De Paix. In total, 36 children, all between three and five years old, joined in the research.

Child participation in research

The Lundy Model of Child Participation guided the research, to make sure that the children could say what they thought. Based on its four key elements which are space, voice, audience and influence I created three age-appropriate projects that were used for the children to express themselves. The first project consisted of a paper heart and 14 illustrations. These illustrations represented activities that the children are familiar with. For example, playing outside, colouring and a family in front of a house. The children had to choose their five favourite illustrations and put them into their hearts. The second project used the same 14 illustrations but for this project the children used three coloured sticks (red, orange and green) to grade the illustrations. If the children used the green stick this meant that they liked the activity showed on the illustration, orange that they were okay with it and red represented disliking. The third project was drawing a happy day, for this project the children were free to draw without any directions of others. These three projects aimed to understand what the children themselves found important. Aligning with the "influence" element, children chose the project they liked the most, which meant that they were deciding on how the study was conducted. Additionally, I organised interviews with staff members from Terre de Paix and parents to understand their perception of what is important for these children to compare it with the responses from the children. The final part of my research focused on analysing the children’s progress reports, to see what they were doing well and where they needed more help to improve their well-being. 

Image 1: One of the three projects for the children (Uk and Puk project).

Outcomes

During the three projects and when the children were asked about what they liked to do the most, they told us that spending time with their parents was super important. This theme was reflected throughout all three projects. In the first project, where the children selected their favourite illustration, the family-centred illustration was the most popular choice in two locations. In the second project, almost all children marked the family illustration as green. During the third project, most of the children drew their family members. When asking the children about why the drew their families or chose the family illustration the children replied that they do not get to spend a lot of time together with their parents. They told us that most of their parents were gone all day to earn money and that their biggest desire was to be at home and be with their parents the entire day. The need of wanting to spend time with parents is what academics refer to as 'the attachment theory’. This theory emphasizes the importance of strong parent-child bonds for child development and well-being.

During the interviews with the parents, they shared that for them education was the most important thing for their children. Their wishes circle back to the living environment of the families because they are currently living in areas that are unsafe and have limited access to necessary resources. Their wish for the children is to escape poverty and have a better life somewhere else. They said the only way to do that was to get a good education and learn the right skills for a good job. Teachers at Terre De Paix agreed that education is important, but they also said that the children are showing a great desire to spend more time with their parents. Finally, when we looked at the children their progress reports, we found that the overall scores in two of the three locations were higher across various developmental categories. This comparison suggests that where the children live, may be an underlying cause that is hindering the children’s development.

Lessons learned

In all three parts of my study, I saw how important parents are in the lives of these children. It became very clear that parents have a big impact on how well these children do. But when I talked to the parents, I realized that it was not that they did not want to spend more time with their children, it was just that their living circumstances held them back from this. Their ongoing struggle with fighting poverty resulted in their focus being on getting food on the table rather than spending time with their children. This made it very difficult to do new programs like the Care for Child Development project by UNICEF. The program focuses on providing parents and caregivers with the necessary skills to foster their children's development during the crucial early years. Even though this seems like a perfect solution to meet the needs of the children because of its focus on strengthening the relationship between child and parent while educating the children it is difficult to implement as the parents simply do not have any time. Therefore, in future research efforts, the focus should be on understanding how these families live and which areas of their lives can be improved to figure out how they can dedicate more time to their children and address their needs.

Image 2: A child with their paper heart filled with its favourite activities.

3 April 2024 - Özlemnur Ataol & Roger Thomassen

The world is becoming more urbanized. Cities, the ecosystems conflating mass production and consumption, face increasing challenges from resource depletion and waste generation. On that note, circular urban development is becoming prominent as a means of sustainable development. Circular development applies circular economy principles in cities, through which urban sources (land, energy, material, and water) never become waste by circulating products and materials by reusing, refurbishing, maintenance, remanufacturing, recycling, and composting. This process attaches a critical role to the social system of cities that covers citizens' daily lifestyles, shedding light on their consumption behaviors that directly affect the production in cities. Therefore, urban citizens need to be equipped with the knowledge, values, and competencies necessary for circular development toward creating resilient communities.

Children are urban citizens, and they are central partners in collaboratively building inclusive and sustainable futures in cities: Not only do 57% of the world's children population live in cities, but children also present the ability to comprehend the world's social and environmental problems, such as inequality, rapid urbanization, and climate change, and to suggest feasible solutions. More importantly, Article 3 (best interest of the child) and 12 (right to express views) of UNCRC (1989) empower children to participate in decision-making processes concerning their (sustainable) futures

The CIRCLEcity project designs a collaborative action research with children (11-12 years old) living in urban areas to co-investigate their perceptions of sustainable/unsustainable consumption behaviors and their approach to utilizing circularity in their action plans targeting their unsustainable consumption behaviors toward change in favor of sustainable development responding to SDG # 11 (sustainable communities) and 12 (sustainable consumption)

The CIRCLEcity project adopts a conceptual framework of Education for Urban Circular Development that is suggested by dr. Özlemnur Ataol with dr. Darian Meacham as an attempt to mainstream circularity in education/learning for sustainable development. Education for Urban Circular Development  aims to nurture one's comprehension of the pluriform society as a way of understanding various roles of citizens (producer, retailer, seller, and consumer) and activating willingness to take an active role in sustainable development. It also aims to enhance citizens’ inventory of skills with circular actions and circular thinking to forward circular development.

The goal of the CIRCLEcity project is to empower children by activating their (urban) citizenship and to better understand their critical role in fighting against climate change. In the long run, these collectively contribute to collaboratively building sustainable communities pron to improve the (urban) living situation of children of today and tomorrow. This goal is achieved through a three-folded protocol aiming at:

• Collecting children's perspectives on pluriform society,
• Investigating children's perceptions of sustainable/unsustainable consumption behaviors,
• Exploring children's approach to utilizing a circular approach in their community action plans.

In parallel, the intended outcomes of the project present three dimensions, involving advancing children's critical thinking, enhancing children's awareness of their role in pursuing sustainable development, and enhancing children's circular thinking and circular skills. Additionally, in the long run, it is expected that children expand their ties with their own communities and cities.

The CIRCLEcity project creates awareness of circular development among children, who are the future of nations. Considering the announcement of 2023 as the European Year of Skills by the European Commission, the CIRCLEcity project timely contributes to enhancing children's skills in circular thinking and circular actions beneficial for sustainable development. With its action workshop, the project also provides them with the perception of their own responsibility within their community and a platform to experiment with new means of sustainable development. More importantly, the project highlights the critical role of children in paving the way toward sustainable futures. Also, the new novel circular approaches planned by children and their perspectives on unsustainable/sustainable consumption behaviors carry the potential to inform urban professionals and policymakers.

The CIRCLEcity will soon organize 3-layered action workshops with children living in Maastricht over three weeks, applying the tasks listed below. Evident in the literature that diagnostic and expressive methods are commonly used in collaborative research with school-aged children (6-12 years old), the action workshop utilizes discussions with children first to explore the roles of city actors and position themselves within and second to diagnose unsustainable consumption behaviors and interconnected interests exacerbating this; later the action workshop utilizes presentations to give voices to children to present their plan of community action, using the circular approach, to convert detected unsustainable consumption behavior to sustainable ones.

The CIRCLEcity project, funded by the Children's Rights Research (CRR) Fund , brings forces of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University and CNME Maastricht from January 2024 to September 2024. The project team consists of dr. Özlemnur Ataol, a researcher at Maastricht University and lecturer at the University of Groningen, Roger Thomassen, education specialist from CNME Maastricht and the founder of Made from Scratch, and Bruno Leijssen, a Master’s student in Supply Chain Management at Maastricht University. The CIRCLEcity project is designed by dr. Özlemnur Ataol and the CIRCLEcity workshops are organized in collaboration with Roger Thomassen and Bruno Leijssen.