The experience of being a child in Unga Ltd. Ward, Arusha, Tanzania in 2015 Presented by Hannah McCandless On behalf of the Caucus for Children’s Rights

INTRODUCTION CCR’s mission: to create a culture of action, attention, and accountability to children by first protecting them. Unga Ltd. Ward: an urban unplanned neighborhood in an expanding city, infamous for extreme poverty and lack of adequate social services.

PURPOSE OF OUR STUDY We conduct research with children in order to understand how individual children narrate and make meaning of their experience. This serves as a transformative intervention so that children start to understand themselves as social actors differently.

METHODOLOGY Data collection: – Storytelling workshop with 24 primary school students at Unga Ltd. Primary – Narrative and storytelling are powerful ways to process lived experience both for the storyteller and the researcher. Data analysis: – Grounded Theory – Glaser & Straus, 1967

WHAT WE LEARNED Prompting question: What is it like to be a child in Unga Ltd.? Children in urban unplanned neighborhoods live lives more complex than what we are told by dominant development discourse

WHAT WE LEARNED: CHILDREN ARE PUNISHED Punishment is almost always physical – One child described being beaten until he bled Children are angry in response to punishment but often expressed that they did not want to repeat the behavior for fear of being punished

WHAT WE LEARNED: CHILDREN HARM OTHER CHILDREN Perhaps a consequence of abuse themselves? Stealing, verbally harassing, physically harming Gang of street children – Abuse/hardship released in the form of abusing others

CHILDREN DO NOT LIVE WITH THEIR PARENTS Many children cited not living with their parents due to alcoholism, dangerous living conditions, and abuse. Many instances of step-parents abusing children.

CHILDREN ARE INSPIRED BY THEIR PARTICIPATION IN CHILDREN’S RIGHTS CLUB Teachers had taken it upon themselves to start this club Children learned, internalized, acted This is the exact behavior we are trying to create in adults.

CHILDREN REFLECT ON THEIR EXPERIENCES, LEARN FROM THEM, AND TRY TO IMPROVE Demonstrate self-awareness and strategies to self improve which shows maturity and resilience in a challenging context One child talked about how he was not performing well in school so he reflected on how his peers behaved and tried to mimic their behavior.

CHILDREN EMPATHIZE WITH OTHER CHILDREN AND DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS When children witnessed other children suffer or being deprived of their rights, they empathized and sometimes acted. Again, this is another behavior we are trying to build in adults, so it is powerful to see these behaviors in children.

WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE BETTER Conducting research with children in developing contexts – Value placed on consent, parent responsibility, community ownership of children – Issues of consent and responsibility – We had planned on 8-10 students, but we ended up getting 24, so it was complicated

CONCLUSIONS Children in Unga Ltd. live at the mercy of the adults in their life, and childhood can often be a struggle. Hardship is common, but children can transcend these obstacles and protect one another, may experience protection by adults, and love from parents who work hard to help their children to succeed. There is a dichotomy in children’s life. While the context in which children reside challenges them, children demonstrate behaviors that CCR is trying to catalyze in a critical mass of adults. They protect their peers, they reflect, empathize and attempt to self-improve.