Let’s stop deciding FOR African children and communities. Here’s your chance to listen to what they have to say.
Several years ago, Firelight realized it was investing in the power of communities to tackle challenges without ever properly asking those communities what they saw as the greatest problems impacting on children and young people.
In effect, we were not supporting true community-driven change. What’s more we were missing a huge opportunity to do philanthropy in a different and far more meaningful way, away from the dictates of the Global North.
This wasn’t just a Firelight problem. It was, and is, a sector problem. For us, putting it right had to start with listening to what children, youths and their families had to say about their own realities, wellbeing, challenges, opportunities, and solutions.
So, we partnered with expert African researchers and community leaders to develop a comprehensive, community-informed understanding of the realities of children’s rights and wellbeing in Zambia, Tanzania, and Malawi.
We started by mapping out the status of children’s rights in different areas before diving deep into how children themselves describe how they do or don’t experience rights in their day to day lives.
What we ended up with was a rich, complex, sobering, and illuminating set of findings around how communities conceptualize, understand, and prioritize children’s rights and wellbeing in their own cultural and socioeconomic contexts – but don’t take our word for it.
Read our introduction to the findings and share the richness of what we learned from communities in each of the three countries - and the wisdom and insight that comes from really listening.
Malawi Child/Youth Mapping
Tanzania Child/Youth Mapping
Zambia Child/Youth Mapping
You can also listen to a January 2023 presentation of the findings here.
And if you're curious about what community-driven systems change is and how and why Firelight supports it, please visit https://www.firelightfoundation.org/cdsc to find out more.