298 - Bridging Worlds: Integrating Perspectives of Children and Youth in Curriculum Design Across Latin America, Asia & Africa with Participatory Methods

Abstract Information: Children International (CI) launched a process to develop a globally relevant curriculum for child and youth development. To cultivate inclusivity, empower voices of children and youth, and ensure relevancy, and enrich curriculum design, CI utilized youth participatory tools to capture the unique perspectives from eight countries. The age groups ranged from caregivers of young children to children and youth from 6 – 24 years old. The focus was to understand a) how caregivers, children and youth define success for their future, b) the enabling factors and barriers to achieving success, and c) ways in which this can be addressed through program curriculum. To capture information from diverse ages and cultures while maintaining a manageable process, the team adapted youth participatory tools from materials presented in the New Orleans conference in 2022 by Julie Poncelet, as the best methods. The team used multiple methods, including a Graffiti Wall and Fish and Boulders 1. Graffiti Wall enables participants to write or draw out their response to a prompt on a large piece of paper or post-it notes which they affix to a large sheet of paper, wall, or window. The result is a colorful wall of “graffitied” responses. Fish and Boulder method was also used. This method uses imagery of a river flowing to a lake, where fish represented enabling factors and boulders represented barriers to achieving goals for children and youth. The participatory methods include sense-making, thus elevating the findings directly decided by participants, instead of by the evaluator. This not only amplifies the voices of the children and youth who the program aims to serve, but it is also less cumbersome for the facilitators and evaluation team to analyze results and synthesize. Instead, they leave the session with the key results identified by the participants and have minimal additional analysis to conduct. This session will describe the tools, process utilized to virtually train local evaluators and facilitators in eight countries, and experience of capturing input and facilitating participatory methods from diverse age groups, cultures, and countries. Presenters will share how the results were synthesized locally and globally and utilized in curriculum design.

Citation: Graffiti Wall and Fish and Boulders © 2022 by Julie Poncelet is licensed under CC BY 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/