Valuing children’s knowledge: the politics of listening

Abstract

Children’s voices matter and can help us to understand the complex realities of their lives, but for children and young people to be heard, people in positions of power need to be included in participatory processes with them to build their confidence in the value of children’s evidence. Based on revisits to participatory evaluations in the UK and Nepal, I show how children and young people’s evidence can lead to transformational change and that their evidence can be valued if local power dynamics, including those between adults and children, are recognized and addressed. Mechanisms for how this can be done are presented.