Dialogue: Uncertainty: Child and youth rights and participation

Read our summary report and watch the recording below:

Date and time: Thursday 15th September 12:30pm-2pm UK Time

Young people do not necessarily view uncertainty in their lives as negative, especially those most-marginalised youth who see their ‘certainty’ as poverty, unemployment and environmental fragility.

Faced with uncertainty, fragile environments and transitional moments, young people can create innovative strategies. We will focus on how adults, including those working on policy and practice in rights and philanthropy, can learn from how children and youth can positively navigate uncertainty.

This dialogue presents, from the perspectives of academics, policymakers, funders and youth researchers and activists, how we need to work with children and youth if we are to find new, more hopeful futures in the face of uncertainty.

Speakers

• Milki Getachew, Goldsmiths and Department of Social Work, University of Addis Ababa. Milki is a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has been seconded from her role as a lecturer in Social Work at Addis Ababa University. She is currently researching youth and intergenerational decision-making in migration in a fragile area of rural Ethiopia.
• Amid Ahmed, Department of Sociology, Debre Markos University and PhD Student at the Institute of African Studies, Addis Ababa University. Amid lectures in the Department of Sociology at Debre Markos University in Ethiopia. His research interests include youth studies with a particular emphasis on marginalized youth, migration, addiction, and crime.
• Nicola Ansell, Professor of Human Geography, Brunel University. Nicola Ansell is a Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Brunel University London. Her research focuses on social and cultural change in the lives of young people in the global South, particularly southern Africa, and the educational and social policies that produce and respond to such change. Nicola is also author of Children, Youth and Development (Routledge, second edition 2017) and of more than 70 other publications. She runs an MA programme at Brunel in Children, Youth and International Development.
• Lucy Shuttleworth, Film Producer. Lucy Shuttleworth has a wealth of experience as a screenwriter, lecturer and producer. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and regularly lectures on adaptation and screenwriting at the University of Brighton and at Liverpool University John Moores. As a writer, lecturer and development executive, developing both TV and film projects and working with both undergraduates and postgraduates, she has a unique insight into the creative process particularly around issues of social change. She currently teaches Screenwriting, Creative Writing and Media Cultures and Industries at The University of Portsmouth.
• Sumon Kamal Tuladhar, ActionAid Nepal. Sumon is an Equity Specialist with the British Council and ADB Nepal, working on the School Sector Development Plan of the Government of Nepal. Previously Sumon has worked with the National Assessment of Student Achievement, the VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas) and YOUR World Research, a project focusing on marginalised young people’s living rights in fragile and conflict affected situations in Nepal and Ethiopia.
• Kavita Ratna, Director-Advocacy, The Concerned for Working Children (CWC). Kavita has been involved with information management, communications, advocacy and training at The Concerned for Working Children (CWC). She has facilitated the process of developing Alternate Reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1998 and in 2003. As a Director of CWC, she has also been associated with the International Movement of Working Children since its formation in 1996. Kavita has been involved with Dhruva, the Training and Consultancy Unit of CWC, since its inception and has been intimately involved in conducting workshops and designing strategies that enable children’s participation, protagonism and Governance.

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