The Being Heard project worked to promote ethical and meaningful participation of children in events and research on sexual violence, identifying gaps in both process and research, and engaging with young researchers on how to enable participatory work.
Children and youth participation in events and research on sensitive topics can be a challenging issue. The active involvement of young people beyond their role as subjects of research has been a notable gap in both research presented at SVRI Forums, and among Forum delegates. These gaps reflected a need for capacity-building work with researchers, programme developers, event organisers and policy makers on the importance of involving young people in research; methods for asking young people about violence; and the ethics of involving children and young people in research and events on child abuse and neglect.
To address this gap, the SVRI in partnership with Bedfordshire University’s International Centre: Researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Trafficking and Violence (now the Safer Young Lives Research Centre), brought a group of young researchers to the SVRI Forum 2017 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil through a system of bursaries to participate at the Forum and share their experiences as well as review literature on participatory research with children and young people on sexual violence.
The project was guided by a project advisory committee and supported by the Oak Foundation and other partners.