Adolescence

exactly ‘youth participation’ looks like. A recent report inthe Journal of Community Psychology sheds light on thisissue, explaining that youth organizing gives a new role toadults. “Rather than leading, adults need to be in the background,monitoring, mentoring, facilitating, but not being incharge. Young people want support from adults in the formof dialogue, coaching, and providing connections to sourcesof institutional, community, and political power.” 15The Committee on the Rights of the Child has encouragedgovernments to put in place legal and policy frameworks andmechanisms to ensure the systematic participation of childrenand young people at all levels of society. A good exampleis the recent development of a National Strategy on ChildParticipation by the Government of Mongolia. Formulationof the strategy involved extensive consultations with adolescentsand youth at the local, provincial and national levels.The positive experience of active youth engagement in thisprocess has given greater impetus to child and youth participationin national and local decision-making forums.Young people must also be given a voice in deciding howbest to allocate resources. This can be done through the formationof youth groups, forums or other channels throughwhich youth can express their opinions. Some countries areeven taking steps to include youth as partners in the developmentof Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. 16UNICEF Brazil, for example, has encouraged adolescentsto become partners in social budgeting initiatives.Adolescents received training to help them identify areasof public policy relevant to them, undertake research,estimate the benefits of additional expenditures on socialspending and become effective advocates.TECHNOLOGYMap Kibera and Regynnah’s empowermentby Regynnah Awino andMap KiberaMap Kibera – a partnership between local youth,non-governmental organizations and several UnitedNations agencies including UNICEF – is based inKibera in Nairobi, Kenya. It engages young people,particularly young women and girls, in the participatorydigital mapping of risks and vulnerabilitiesin their community, which is Africa’s largest slum.Through this process, young people gain new awarenessabout their surroundings, empowering them toamplify their voices on critical issues. The projectis helping identify safe and unsafe physical spaces,as well as raising awareness and offering advocacyopportunities around the issues of HIV and AIDS andother vulnerabilities.Map Kibera involves five steps:• Stakeholder meetings: Implementers considerissues of gender-based violence, HIV and AIDS orrelated topics to identify the most appropriate mapdata to collect.• Map data collection: Thirteen young mappersfrom the community use global positioning system(GPS) devices and open source software to createa map of safe and dangerous areas; then the datais uploaded to OpenStreetMap.• Community consultations: Using printed maps,tracing paper and coloured pens, the mappersconduct discussions with girls and youngwomen about safety and vulnerability, leadingto better situational awareness for both girlsand planners.• Narrative media: Young people from the communityuse videos, photos and audio to create shortnarratives about the issues they face, which arethen interwoven into the map narrative.• Advocacy: Quantitative and qualitative dataare used for advocacy with local governments,community leaders and other decision-makersto obtain better services and protection foryoung people.Results from the mapping process will be used toidentify physical and psychological areas of risk orvulnerability and patterns of risk perception. Theinformation will be publicly owned and available,helping keep grass-roots advocates and policyplanners more accountable to young people inthe community.Regynnah, one of the mappers, provides below anaccount of her involvement in the project.70THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 2011