In Their Own Words: An assessment of children’s views on COVID-19

Save the Children has embraced the Child Rights Programming (CRP) approach to plan, implement and monitor programmes with the overall goal of improving the position of children so that all boys and girls can fully enjoy their rights and can live in societies that acknowledge and respect children’s rights. At the core of CRP is the principle of child participation, which pre-supposes that children are not mere passive recipients of our services, but rather, rights holders with an inherent ability to meaningfully participate in all the stages of programming. CRP is a key ingredient in Save the Children’s Kenya country strategy, and as such, our intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic had to be inspired by meaningful participation of children.

It is against this background that Save the Children Kenya conducted an engagement with children to seek their views on COVID 19, understand their worries and recommendations. The purpose of this was to hear from children and be able to make critical advocacy recommendations. The activity took place between April 10 and May 5, 2020 in Turkana, Wajir and Bungoma counties.