Harry Shier

Organisation

Centro de Servicios Educativos en Salud y Medio Ambiente CESESMA (Centre for Education in Health and Environment), San Ramón, Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Contact details

E-mail: harryshier@hotmail.com|
Telephone: +505 772 5660 (we are 6 hours behind GMT); mobile: +505 852 5444
Postal address: CESESMA, Apdo. #316, Matagalpa, Nicaragua
CESESMA website| (the CESESMA website is in both Spanish and English)

Track record of engagement in public action

In the UK: These are some highlights from many years of engagement at different levels:

• 1997-2000: Designing and developing the Article 31 Children's Consultancy Scheme, which enables young children to act as specialist consultants to the senior management of diverse cultural institutions, helping them make facilities and programmes more child-friendly.
• 1998-2000: Co-founding and co-ordinating "Kids Against Racism": a network of children and young people organised through out-of-school projects in Birmingham and Gloucester, acting together to challenge racism and discrimination in their communities.
• 2000: Organising "Playfest 2000", a project which brought together children and young people from the five countries of Britain and Ireland for a festival to celebrate the child's right to play. The project involved the children taking over Cardiff Town Hall for the week-end.

In Nicaragua: Most of my work in Nicaragua is behind the scenes, enabling processes that empower children and young people in public action. The following are some specific examples:

• 2002-2003: Coordinating CESESMA's strategic planning process, establishing the participation and organisation of children and young people as a key objective, and putting in place strategies to achieve this.
• 2002-2007: Member of the Nicaraguan Coordinating Council of NGOs working with Children and Young People, CODENI; working to challenge tokenism and create models for genuine participation in the activities of CODENI and member organisations.
• 2003-2007: Developing CESESMA's programme for training young community education activists (Promotores/as) FOCAPEC, which includes training young people in organisation and communication skills, community development, participation and political incidence.
• 2006: Co-facilitator of national forum, "Investment in Children and youth: Guarantee of national and local development", which enabled children and young people to develop the arguments they subsequently put directly to the presidential candidates in the run-up to the national elections.

Associated research project

Non-Governmental Actors in New Governance Spaces: Navigating the Tensions, University of the West of England
Type of fellowship: Analytic and conceptual reflection

Start date and duration

September 2007. Six months (one month at UWE Bristol, three months fieldwork in Nicaragua, further two months at UWE)

Objectives of the fellowship

• Generate new information on recent and current trends in the empowerment of children and young people as public actors in Nicaragua.
• Develop a theoretical understanding of this information drawing together current theoretical work on children and youth participation, both in the UK social policy and international development contexts, and governmentality and social movement theory.
• Make the resulting findings available (in both English and Spanish) in such a way that they serve as conceptual tools to help non-governmental organisations effectively support and empower children and young people as public actors in different governance spaces.

Added value to project

• Enhances theoretical understanding of opportunities and tensions in new governance spaces by highlighting the role of children and young people as social actors in these spaces, and identifying important trends in this area.
• Strengthens the conclusions and recommendations, enabling these to address specific issues and tensions facing NGOs and other non-governmental actors in supporting and empowering children and young people as public actors.
• Added value to NGPA programme goals
• Contributes to the development of existing theory by integrating work on children and youth participation into the "mainstream" of our developing knowledge and understanding of non-governmental public action in general.
• Generates and shares new empirical information on current trends in this area in Nicaragua.
• Develops and strengthens links between researchers and practitioners in both Nicaragua and the UK, and internationally between the two countries. Builds links between theory and practice, and between the fields of domestic social policy and international development.

Added value to practitioner group (CESESMA / CODENI)

• Provides a better conceptual model to underpin policy and strategy development, leading to greater empowerment of children and young people as social actors.
• Helps us eliminate tokenism, manipulation and "false" participation.
• Helps us generate guidelines for more effective strategic and project planning.
• Documents and analyses recent work of the organisations: CESESMA at local level, CODENI and its member organisations at national level.
• Enhances the standing and credibility of the organisation.
• Added value to other practitioner groups in general
• Given effective dissemination, the first three of the above: better conceptual model, elimination of tokenism and guidelines to improve planning, all provide added value across the wider field, at both national and international levels.

Activities and outputs

Activities: three phases

1. Background research and reading; integration of existing theoretical work in inter-related policy fields leading to construction of initial research paradigm. Carried out with support of project team at UWE, Bristol. 1 month.
2. Field research, Nicaragua: A series of in-depth interviews / dialogues with key representatives of leading NGOs and community organisations working with children and young people, based on theoretical ideas and methodology developed at UWE. 3 - 4 months. This will happen alongside my normal work at CESESMA, and I will not need to draw a living allowance.
3. Reflective analysis with support of UWE project team, leading to elaboration of new conceptual framework. Seminar(s) to discuss and refine findings, clarify theoretical propositions. Writing of final paper for publication. Carried out at UWE Bristol. 2 months.

Outputs

The principal output envisaged is a final conceptual paper for publication. This will be backed by additional dissemination activities planned in collaboration with the UWE team: seminars, short courses or conference inputs to interested practitioner groups and/or students.