PLA Notes 42: Children’s Participation - Evaluating Effectiveness

This special issue of PLA Notes examines issues surrounding the evaluation of children's participation. It considers: what happens when children have opportunities to play an active role in shaping their communities and the conditions for their own well-being; how to determine if these initiatives serve the ideals of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; and how to make evaluation itself a partnership between children and adults.

This edition features 11 articles on evaluating children's participation, and is based on a symposium on 'Children's Participation in Community Settings' held in Oslo, Norway in June 2000. It also builds on PLA Notes 25, a previous special issue on children's participation published in 1996, which focused on ethical concerns, institutional contexts, and participatory techniques.

This edition also includes two general articles:

A paper detailing a workshop on agroforestry education that sought to teach participatory techniques to lecturers at higher education institutions across South East Asia.

A paper on a participatory workshop on gender issues held in Yemen, and, in particular, how disabled groups were able to take part.

The Tips for Trainers paper is an item on introducing workshop participants to participatory techniques.