Parallel Session:
Resilience from an international perspective
Facilitator
Maja Haals Brosnan
131
Zambian Perspectives
A participatory contextualisation of youth civic engagement (YCE) from both youth and adult Zambian perspectives
Sheila McArdle
Galway Mayo Institute of Technology
132
S H E I L A M C A R D L E
B U I L D I N G R E S I L I E N C E , E N H A N C I N G S O C I A L S U P P O R T : W H A T R E S E A R C H T E L L S U S
T U E S D A Y , 6 T H D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6
C R I N N I
D U B L I N
ZAMBIAN PERSPECTIVES: A PARTICIPATORY CONTEXTUALISATION OF YOUTH CIVIC
ENGAGEMENT FROM BOTH YOUTH AND ADULT ZAMBIAN PERSPECTIVES
INTRODUCTION
• Overview of the research design and methodology
• Mis-match between adult and youth
understandings of Youth Civic Engagement
• Insights into resilience and risks embedded within
the daily lives of young people within the cultural
context
• Resilience and Youth Civic Engagement
• Questions and answers
CULTURAL COMPETENCY NORTHERN – SOUTHERN DYNAMICS
• Northern understandings of resilience and risk may
be inappropriate in other cultural contexts…(Ungar, et.al. 2007; Serpell and Jere-Folotiya, 2008)
• The challenge is to create processes which
facilitate the voices of young people to be heard.
Essentially without de-stabilising the very culture that
sustains them in their context.(Mason & Bolzan, 2010, p.136).
CULTURAL COMPETENCY
• Deference by young people to elders
• Adults main decision-makers
• Gender power imbalances
• Collective communities
• Tribes – 73 different ethnic groups (Translator)
RESEARCH CONTEXT
Country Zambia,
Central Africa
• Geographical
boundaries
• Lusaka
• Western Province
• Southern Province
PARTICIPANTS
• Total of six study
sites
• One urban
• One rural
• A total of 68 adults (18 year of age and above)
• A total of 80 young
people (12, 13 and 14
years of age)
RESEARCH AIM AND OBJECTIVE
Aim: To examine Zambian youth and adult
perspectives of Youth Civic Engagement (YCE).
Objectives:
• To establish local understanding of YCE
• To locally define risk and resilience factors
• To identify risk and resilience factors in relation to
YCE
• To identify resilience factors perceived to be
associated with YCE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY TWO STRANDED APPROACH
Strand one: Mapping of Existing
Youth Services
Strand two: Direct work with
community members through
two phases
Phase one:
Contextualisation
Phase two:
Collaborative
review
Existing data bases
Photography Reflective Journal
RESEARCH PROCESS – PHASE ONE CONTEXTUALISATION
Plenary session
Young males
Adult females
Young females
Adult males
X 6 areas
RESEARCH PROCESS – PHASE TWO COLLABORATIVE REVIEW
Findings
Young people
Adults
Researcher
X 6 areas
ZAMBIAN DEFINITIONS OF YCE
Adult Perspective
‘Political engagement’
Youth Perspective
“You engage in not just for yourself, but for the good of others and future generations”
(Craig, YM, SS1)
MIS-MATCH
• Illuminated adult and youth understandings of a
topic can be quite different.
• Lister et al., (2003 p.235) and Sanders and Munford,
(2008, p.357) both advocate that adult definitions of
YCE are often too restrictive to accommodate
young people’s understandings
• Youth understandings moved the research beyond
political engagement
TYPES OF YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Civic Social Cultural Political Economic
School: Community: School: Youth: Male activities:
A member of:
Children’s council or
student council
Prefect or monitor
Children’ Rights Club
Debate Club
Science club,
Self-evaluation club
Peer groups
Caring for others
National Independence
Day celebrations
Culture club
Drama club
Poetry club
Dancing singing
Arts club
Youth pressure
groups
Street vending
Farming and labouring.
Crushing stone
Community:
Member of youth
activities, clubs,
scouts/girl guides, red
cross, Youth Alive,
Sport/school activities:
Football, netball, volleyball,
basketball, baseball,
athletics, rugby, tennis and
swimming
Community:
Initiation
ceremonies
Language
Traditional
values
Mainly Adults: Female activities in
public:
Markets, maids, farming
and prostitution
National Youth
Association
Children’s press
bureau
Sport for Action
Home-based games: Hide
and seek, snakes and
ladders, Icienga, Nsolo,
Chase or It, game, football,
chess, draughts, sigi,
padda padda and riding
bicycles
Spirituality/ faith:
Churches of
different faiths
Youth choirs.
Salvation Army
Advocacy by
churches
Female activities in the
home:
Household chores,
caring for siblings.
School:
Anti-AIDs club, Road and
transport agency – road
safety.
Evangelism,
outreach
Scripture Union
YWCA
Rural development
programmes
LOCAL DEFINITIONS OF RESILIENCE FACTORS
Adults
• Location specific
• Growing crops
• Educational
attainment
• Business acumen
• Healthy, adequate
wealth and
happiness
Young people
• Self reliance
• To be recognised as
an adult by your
community
THE ‘DUAL FACTOR’
Five out of six areas named
prostitution by girls as an
activity.
“prostitution begins, poverty,
just trying to get some money, to help the family”
(Ellen, adult woman:SS5)
“ …(young women) see others wearing those nice clothes at the end of it, this person will think that let me be myself and indulge myself in prostitution in order to get clothes or in order to get enough food myself and also lack of parental care”
(Emmanuel, adult male: SS1)
“some girls do something else like going out into night clubs, going with big men, then they are given money which is bad for them. Some of the girls like money, they end up pregnant…”
(Jeff, young male: SS5)
Risk and Resilience Factors at the Micro Level - Individual Risk factors Resilience factors
Individual
characteristics
exacerbating
risk
Being a girl
child
Being an
orphan
A child with
a disability
Being a
street kid
Residing in a
compound
Residing in a
rural area
Peer pressure
Early school leaving
Lack of sponsorship
Examination leakage
Economic activity
Stealing
Gambling
Witchcraft and jealous
Satanism
Exposure to mass media
De-politicisation
Swimming in rivers e.g. drowning,
cholera
Bereavement and limited emotional
and psychological support
Gender specific (Female)
Prostitution
Early pregnancy
Early marriage
Rape
Mother to child transmission of HIV
Not being sent to school
Gender specific (Male)
Drug mis-use
Intrinsic
An inner wisdom
Spirituality
Knowing your own talents
Quick thinking
Extrinsic
An ability to co-operate with
others
Competent at English
Leadership to others
To know ones rights
Literacy skills
Peer pressure
Educational credentials
Economic activity
Risk and Resilience Factors at the Micro Level – Family
Risk Resilience
Family level Fear of speaking with parents Fear of physical punishment Parental lack of knowledge Lack of family support Limited time for parents to speak with
their children about important issues Allocation of household chores Cultural taboos prevent parents from
discussing family planning Human rights vs. traditional values Mass media
Parental support A good home Given responsibility to complete a
task A strong family line or network A positive role model within the
family Allocation of household chores Educated parents Human rights vs. traditional values
Risk and Resilience Factors – Meso Level - Community Risk Resilience
Communitylevel
Lack of employment Examination leakages Corruption Nepotism Tribalism Initiation ceremonies Lack of youth activities Decline of rural areas Zambian culture under threat Human rights vs. traditional values
Access to school Access to the labour market Access to youth activities Access to sporting activities Adult Community members as
mentors/role models Initiation ceremonies Peer mentors Educational credentials Caring for others Involvement in organised religion Hard work ethic Human rights vs. traditional values
Risk and Resilience Factors – Macro Level – Societal
Risk Resilience
Societal level Corruption Inconsistency of youth provision Lack of the right to speech Centralisation Slow implementation of existing
laws that protect children and youth
Gender inequality in the labour market
Lack of employment Exposure to mass media
Equality policy Decentralisation policy Human rights
Risk and Resilience Factors – Macro Level – Global
Global level International conventions vs. traditional values
Removal of NGO Support Government arrangements with
multi-national companies that lead to the denigration of Zambia
Brain Drain
International conventions vs. traditional values
Continent and international co-operation
RESILIENCE AND EXISTING YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENTS
• The education system plays a pivotal role in providing access to and provision of the majority of YCE opportunities.
• Available out-of-school YCE opportunities tend to be age restrictive catering for youth defined as fifteen to thirty-five years of age.
• Perceived lack of intelligence or lack of economic resources force some young people to leave the education system at approximately 12 years of age
• There is dearth of services targeting young people between the ages of twelve and fourteen years
YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND RESILIENCE
• Among the six study sites it was unanimously agreed the daily lives of young people would be improved through the provision of more YCE opportunities.
• Young people who are in a position to access YCE opportunities, compared to those who are not, may acquire resilience and other social supports more readily.
• Some young people exhibited empathy and appreciation of other young people’s adaptation and self-generation of resilience within the changing social context. It should not be assumed that all young people have the capacity to create their own sources of resilience
FACTORS INFLUENCING ACCESS TO RESILIENCE AND
Gender, age, location and socio-economic
background are significant factors restricting access
to the in-school and out-of-school YCE opportunities.
• A large range of social engagement opportunities
are available, but are gender biased towards males
• Religion perceived to be the most equitable YCE
opportunity in the context.
• Restricted access to political engagement
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Adults“the problem is with the youth, get organised to have a strong voice to reach the government to help you”
(Winston, AM, SS 6)
Pezulani: “…so now it is up to the youth to roar.”
Researcher: “Is there space for young people to do that?”
Pezulani: “Yes the space is there, we seem to be blocking their way”
(Pezulani AM SS 5)
Young people
“We want the government to listen to what we are saying because there are some issues, as children, especially for the girl child is bad, but for our voices to be heard it is not possible as we are not given the opportunity to speak out”
(Kathryn YF, SS5)
CONCLUSION
The research was underpinned with cultural competency so the research methodology would enable the voices of young people and adults to be heard in the cultural context.
Through the collective research processes the views of young people widened the research beyond the adult understanding of YCE as ‘political’ to include social, cultural, economic and civic. The research dialogues provided unique insights into risk and resilience factors embedded within the daily lives of young people in Zambia.
Gender, age, location and socio-economic background are significant factors restricting access to the in-school and out-of-school YCE opportunities
It also emerged adults verbally encouraged young people to voice and engage politically, but their actions present barriers to restrict youth political engagement.
REFERENCES
• Bottrell, D. (2009). Understanding ‘marginal’ perspectives. Towards a social theory of resilience. Qualitative social work (8) 321- 337
• Dolan, P., Canavan, J. & Brady, B. (2006). Connecting with practice in the changing landscape of family support training in Child Care in Practice 12 (1), 43 -51.
• Dolan, P. (2008) Prospective possibilities for building resilience in children, their families and communities. Child Care and Practice, 14 (1), 83-91.
• Husain, F. (2006). Cultural competency, cultural sensitivity and family support in Dolan, P., Canavan, J., & Pinkerton, J. (Editors) Family Support as Reflective Practice. London. Jessica Kingsley Publishers Limited.
• Ledwith, M.(2001). Community work as critical pedagogy: Re-envisioning Freire and Gramsci. Community Development Journal 36 (3), 171-182
• Mason, I. & Bozan, N. (2010). Questioning understandings of children’s participation, in Percy-Smith, B. & Thomas, N. (Editors). A handbook of children, young people’s participation. UK. Routledge
• Masten, A. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychological Association. 56 (3), 227-238.
• Nsamenang, A.B.(2008). (Mis) understanding early childhood development in Africa. The force of local and global motives in Garcia, M., Pence, A.& Evans,J.(Editors). Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge. USA. The World Bank.
• Percy-Smith, B. & Thomas, N. (2010). Emerging themes and new directions in Percy-Smith, B. & Thomas, N. (Editors). A handbook of children, young people’s participation. UK. Routledge.
• Plan. (2007). Because I am a girl: The state of the world’s girls 2007. Plan UK. Plan• Serpell, R. & Jere-Folotiya, J.(2008) Developmental assessment, cultural context, gender and schooling in Zambia.
International Journal of Psychology. 43 (2) 88-96.• Ungar, M. Brown, M., Liebenberg, L. Othman, R., Kwong, M.W., Armstrong, M. & Gilgun, J. (2007). Unique pathways
to resilience across cultures. Adolescence 42 (166) 287-310.• Ungar, M. (2008) Resilience across culture. British Journal of Social Work. 38 (10), 218-235.
“I see 6, You see 9”
A reflection on the problematic nature of applying Western child development theory in a universal fashion when providing social supports to young children accessing early
childhood education in India
Sinead Matson, Maynooth University
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/69-principle-power-compromise-gert-penne
Why India? Background & Context
20% of the World’s population of children under 9 years of age live in India; 164
million children under the age of six (GOI, 2011).
A noted lack of research in Early Childhood Education in India (UNICEF, 2011)
Since 2010 I have travelled back and forth to a primary school situated in a
marginalised community in India which operates as a charity under a Non-
Government Organisation (NGO). All trips were ‘Voluntourism’ in nature.
I have encountered three ‘Western’ charities (one of which I founded) and their
dealings with the school. Each charity has been heavily influenced by educators:
Early Childhood Education & Care (ECEC) practitioner trainers, Montessori teachers
– both pre-school and primary school, and ECEC practitioners.
I noticed that the higher the number of qualified early childhood professionals on a
trip, the more tensions and frustrations were expressed about local practice in the
early childhood classes. There was an expressed frustration that children were not
playing as their Western training (informed by Western research) dictated was the
way children should learn therefore it was ‘developmentally inappropriate’.
This led me to my current doctoral research study examining the perceived values
and cultural nuances of play in early childhood education with children, their
parents and teachers in a case site in urban India.
What is the ‘West’?
The ‘West’ could be considered a concept, a way of life and a way of viewing
life. It is problematic to define and means different things to different
people.
It has been described as the Minority World, Developed World, First World
and the Global North.
Said has described the West in its relationship as a contrast to the ‘Other’ or
Orient (Said, 1995)
There is no single ‘Western’ culture but a commonality of historical and
cultural background (Reagan, 1995) which can be traced from ancient Greece
to the contemporary North Atlantic community (Gress, 1998)
“The ‘West’ is no longer a geographical location but a way of looking at the
world” (Berger, 2011)
Labels are problematic given the diverse cultures and backgrounds and
fluidity of identity in the ‘West’ but is used in this instance in it’s contrast to
the majority world.
So what’s the problem?
Research on the value of play (Gray, 2013; Bodrova, 2008; Lillard et.al,
2013), play as pedagogy (Moyles, 1989; Rogers,2010; Brooker & Edwards,
2010; Bruce, 1997; Nutbrown, 2011) and Developmentally Appropriate
Practice (DAP) (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; 2000; NAEYC, 2006; Kostelnik,
1998; Taguzi, 2010) in the ‘West’ is problematic when applied universally to
early childhood education supports offered to children in Majority world
countries.
The tensions about the universal application of this research and theory,
particularly in early childhood education services offered to children from
marginalised communities in the majority world whom experience a very
different childhood than that of children in the ‘West’ have been
acknowledged (Viruru, 2001; 2005; Gupta, 2004; 2008; 2011; 2013, Prochner,
2002 and Woodhead, 2003).
It raises questions about the use of the terms ‘developmentally appropriate
practice’ and or its alternative ‘Contextually Appropriate Practice’
(Woodhead, 1996; 1998), the concept of play being the way a child learns
and the ‘normal’ development of a child.
‘Normal’ development: A deficit model
when applied globally?
“Unfortunately, assumptions about what counts as normal development are frequentlyapplied unqualified within international policy and curriculum development … Thesecultural assumptions are brought into sharp focus when compared with more ethnographicstudies of children’s lives throughout much of the Majority World, highlighting thecircumstances where values for childhood are about early socialisation into work andeconomic contribution rather than about realising individual human potential througheducation”
Woodhead, 2006
“This pressure towards measuring … produces a fictional ‘child’ that is abstracted fromgender, class, racialized and other social axes and divisions (Viruru, 2006). It also createsthe occlusion of the cultural and national frame of individual human development. Thesubscription to a prototypical subject avoids analysis of the evaluation of differentchildhoods in different circumstances and the ways in which the political boundaries ofnational belonging, or exclusion, delimit what kind of childhood is available to be lived.”
Burman, 2010
Using research generated in, or informed by,
the ‘West’ in local supports in the Majority
world .
Western charities, NGO’s and INGO’s can tend to use research, curricula and practices informed by research generated in the ‘West’ (Prochner, 2002; Kostelnik, 1998; Roopnarine et. al., 1998; Penn, 2010) in majority world contexts, which is problematic.
It can give rise to assumptions that children all develop and progress along a linear sequence without paying attention to the impact of the cultural and societal systems the individual child is living and learning in.
It may not be sympathetic to local customs, values and ways of being.
This begs the following questions:
Will social supports operating this model have a lasting impact?
Do social supports operating this model fail children?
Does it run the risk of using a deficit model for evaluating children and their development?
Is it moral or ethical?
Is it the best we have?
In this particular example, is play being commandeered in the service of meeting particular educational outcomes (Viruru, 2005) or economic outcomes (Penn, 2010); thus seeing children as becomings and not beings?
A (slightly hesitant) argument:
If we use postcolonial theory as a lens through which we view our choices about which research to draw on in assessing what social supports to put in place for children, families and communities in the majority world then we must reject applying universal ‘norms’ and ask local informants. In this light, I would hesitantly argue for local, co-generated research that draws on Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory and Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological systems theory.
I would argue:
In order to understand what childhood is like for a child living in abject poverty in a slum community of urban India we must ask those children living that childhood.
In order to understand the cultural nuances and values communities and families hold in their daily lives we must ask those living in the community and family units.
We must bear witness to how these cultural nuances, values and daily life affect the child and her experience of childhood; we must also check our inherent biases and life experiences.
In order to understand why those values and nuances are held we must look at the wider political sphere and try to decipher the affects on local culture and society.
So let’s talk!
What are the tensions in researching to inform social supports put in place in
the daily lives of children living in the majority world?
How do we create a bank of research from which to draw from that applies
appropriately to the situations we are going into and will go into?
Are we working with the best tools we have?
Is it good enough?
Making children resilient to poor health: can the number of children in a
family play a role?
Mrinal Chadha
University College Cork
168
Making Children Resilient to Poor Health: Can the Number of Children in a Family Play a Role?
Evidence from India
Mrinal Chadha, Rosemary Murphy, Lee-Ann Burke & Edel Walsh
School of Economics
University College Cork, Ireland
Structure• Introduction
• Rationale
• Data & Methods
• Results
• Conclusion
• References
Introduction
• Under 5 mortality rate in India is staggeringly high (48) compared to developed countries (Ireland & UK- 4) (The World Bank Database, 2016)
• Such high mortality rate is because of avoidable causes which signifies lack of health care access (Million Death Study Collaborators ,2010)
• This study attempts to understand the role played by the number of children in a family to make children resilient to poor health
Introduction
• This has been done by comparing the incidence of medical poverty infamilies with no children, one children, two children and threechildren
• Medical poverty has been defined as a state when a non-poor familyfalls below the poverty line after incurring health expenses (Xu,2005)
Rationale
• Very few studies in the literature on medical poverty, also referred asthe impoverishment effect (Kronenberg and Barros,2014;Xu,2005)
• This is the first study that has attempted to associate medical povertywith the number of children in a family
• This study would provide crucial policy suggestions for framing healthcare policies for the Government of India
Data & Methods
• Household level consumer expenditure data (2011-12) collected by National Sample SurveyOrganization (NSSO), New Delhi (GOI, 2014)
• Sample Size: 101662 households with 58.7% in rural India and 41.3% in urban India(GOI,2014)
• Incidence of Medical Poverty has been estimated using the methodology of Xu(2005)
• Pearson’s Chi-square test has been used to measure association between medical povertyand the number of children in a family
• Sampling weights have been applied to estimate the incidence
Results: Percentage Increase in the Incidence of Medical Poverty Compared to families with No Children
• The incidence of medicalpoverty has been found toincrease by approx. 23% inthe case of families withthree children compared tofamilies with no children.
Results: Percentage Increase in the Incidence of Medical Poverty Compared to families with No Children
• The incidence of medical povertyhas been found to increase byapprox. 37% in the case offamilies with three childrencompared to families with nochildren
• In rural India, the incidence ofmedical poverty has not found tobe much different in the case offamilies with no child (5.63%),one child (5.62%), two children(5.14%) and three or morechildren (5.82%)
Results: Incidence of Medical Poverty by Quintiles
Quintile 1 Quintile 5
No child 10.26% 0.22%
One child 12.96% 0.36%
Two children 12.09% 0.02%
Three or more children 11.80% 0%
Results- Pearson’s Chi-Square Test
• This suggests that there is a statistical association between a familyfalling in medical poverty and the number of children in a family.
Pearson Chi2(3) P value
India 22.42 0
Rural India 9.58 0.022
Urban India 10.29 0.016
Quintile1 6.3738 0.095
Quintile5 1.5757 0.665
Summary of Results
• Medical poverty has been found to be a big cause for concern in thecase of families with three or more children in the case of India.
• Irrespective of the location of the family: rural or urban, familieswith three or more children have a higher incidence of medicalpoverty compared to families with no children.
• Children in the poorest 20 percent families are the most vulnerablewhere even raising one child makes a family extremely vulnerable tofall below the poverty line.
Conclusion
• Making children resilient to poor health would require extra supportfor larger families in India, especially for Urban India
• This support may come in the form of different health care schemesfor larger families or extra financial support from the Indiangovernment
• This study also reflects on the need for urban Indians to have healthinsurance, especially for families with more than two children
References
• GOI. (2014). Household Consumption of Various Goods and Services in India 2011-12. Report No 558 (68/1.0/2). New Delhi.
• Million Death Study Collaborators. (2010). Causes of neonatal and child mortality in India: a nationally representative mortality survey. The Lancet, 376(9755), 1853-1860.
• Kronenberg, C., and Barros, P. P. (2014). Catastrophic healthcare expenditure–drivers and protection: the Portuguese case. Health Policy, 115(1), 44-51.
• Xu, K. (2005). Distribution of health payments and catastrophic expenditures methodology.
• World Bank. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT. Accessed 30/11/2016