The Child Advisory Board is an entity built by GlobalChild, a research program housed in the University of New Brunswick, Saint John. The Child Advisory Board will bring together a group of 15 New Brunswick children (ages 11 to 17) to receive training in human rights and will meet periodically to discuss and advise the GlobalChild team on multiple research projects.
The Child Advisory Board will begin as a two-year project, during which the members of the Child Advisory Board will be assembled, trained and consult on GlobalChild projects. The first project the Child Advisory Board will work on will be CORE project in which Children’s Opinions about their Rights in the E-world would be studied.
Another important project on which the Child Advisory Board will be consulted is the SSHRC-funded InspiRights project, a project aimed at taking an inventory of good practices from around the world which promote, respect and protect children’s rights. The identified good practices will be beneficial for governments to refer to in considering how their own practices and programs can improve to better meet the needs and rights of children.
In their work with the InspiRights project, the Child Advisory Board will consult with the InspiRights team, providing their input and insight into what constitutes a good and effective practice, providing key feedback which will shape the assessment and identification of practices throughout the project. The Child Advisory Board will also have the opportunity to participate in different stages of the NB Pilot of GlobalChild as well as pilots across other regions of Canada.
Children have the right to be heard
Child participation is articulated as one of the four grounding principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and is an area of particular importance to GlobalChild’s work. Under Article 12 of the CRC, children have the right to be heard and participate in all matters affecting their lives.
As a general principle, the right to be heard and to participate is central to the fulfillment of all rights, including the right to the attainment of the highest standard of health (Article 24) and the right to life, survival and development (Article 6). Considering this nexus between rights, health and development, GlobalChild is launching the Child Advisory Board project. Indeed, the CRC repaints the image of the child and shifts the paradigm.
Children are experts in their own lives and are uniquely positioned to provide insight and opinions on policies and practices that impact them. It has been widely recognized that children’s involvement in research will improve the research quality. Providing a designated space for children to exercise their agency and voice within research not only recognizes and affirms their human rights but also strengthens the research by providing children’s perspectives and experiences.
This research project intends to not only respect children’s right to be heard, but to also create a space in which children can share their opinions and participate in the research being conducted by GlobalChild. Through children’s participation in GlobalChild’s projects, we enrich the project by bringing children’s perspectives into our work.
How it works
There are two essential parts for the fulfillment of right to be heard: 1) provision of adequate and child-friendly information on the subject; and then 2) providing safe spaces for children to voice their opinions on the subject matter. Working on this central guideline, we will follow Dr. Laura Lundy’s model of child participation in all consultations.
The first session of Child Advisory Board projects will begin with training of the members. Collaborating with child participation experts, the Child Advisory Board will receive training on their human rights as children and how to effectively participate in consultations.
Over the course of CORE project, the Child Advisory Board will meet three times as a team (including two training sessions.)
The work of Child Advisory Board will continue beyond the life of this project and extend to various aspects of the InspiRights and GlobalChild projects. These consultations will include discussions in which the Child Advisory Board will share their thoughts and opinions on projects as well as the development of knowledge translation (KT) products (such as peer-to-peer video clips, and child-friendly documents to raise awareness on children’s rights, the outcome of different projects, and the experience of being a Child Advisory Board member) and actively participating in the planning, designing, producing and delivering of these KT products.
Timeline
This project will run for two years, beginning in 2023 and concluding in 2025.
If you are interested in joining the Child Advisory Board to engage in research that directly impacts your rights, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be looking for 15 children (ages 11 to 17) from Saint John New Brunswick to join our Child Advisory Board .
