Children, Youth and Environments 14(1), 2004 Children and Adolescents Growing Up in Poverty: Comparative Perspectives from India and BrazilA Report from the World Social Forum 2004, India Tamo Chattopadhay Teachers College Columbia University Citation: Chattopadhay, Tamo. “Children and Adolescents Growing Up in Poverty: Comparative Perspectives from India and Brazil- A Report from the World Social Forum 2004, India.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1), 2004: 172-189. Comment on This Field Report Keywords: Brazil, India, NGOs, children in poverty, empowerment of children, role of civil society, international collaboration© 2004 Children, Youth and Environments Children and Adolescents Growing Up In Poverty 174 Contents Introduction ................................................................................... 175 Scope of the Event .......................................................................... 175 Why India and Brazil?...................................................................... 175 The Participants .............................................................................. 176 Overview of Discussions................................................................... 176 The Social Environment of Marginalized Children ................................. 177 Impacts of Changing Family Environments....................................... 177 Lack of Basic Services ................................................................... 178 The Diversity in Contexts of Marginalized Children’s Environments ...... 179 The Political Economy of Children’s Marginalization............................ 179 The Distance between Policy and Practice ........................................ 180 Strategies for Action........................................................................ 180 Framing of Children’s Issues and the Need for Children’s Participation . 180 Strengthening the Existing Bases of Support for Children ................... 181 Harnessing Children’s Intrinsic Assets.............................................. 182 Importance of Listening to Children ................................................ 182 Ensuring Human Rights and Social Harmony in a Multisectoral Framework ................................................................................................. 183 Rethinking the Role of Civil Society ................................................. 183 Reaching the Hardest to Reach....................................................... 183 Being Catalysts for Change ............................................................ 184 Reconceptualizing the Relationship with Government......................... 185 Using Advocacy and Research for Social Change ............................... 186 Big Picture and Next Steps ............................................................... 187 Acknowledgement:.......................................................................... 189 Endnotes ....................................................................................... 189 Children and Adolescents Growing Up In Poverty 175 Introduction This paper reports on the outcomes of an international seminar titled, “Children and Adolescents growing up in Poverty and Marginalization: Comparative Perspectives from India and Brazil,” held at the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai, India. The goal of this paper is to inform the international community of economic development scholars and practitioners about some of the key issues that emerged from the discussions during the seminar. While primarily a “report back,” this paper is also a reflection on practice and an invitation for action. Scope of the Event The primary organizers of the seminar were Childwatch International, a global network of institutions involved in research on childhood, and two of its affiliated organizations: CIESPIInternational Center of Research on Childhood at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and TISS- Tata Institute for Social Sciences, in Mumbai, India. The event aimed to facilitate a dialogue between researchers, practitioners and advocates working with socially and economically marginalized children and adolescents in India and Brazil. Why India and Brazil? While comparative seminars in development are not new, the choice of participating countries is typically dominated by the “regionalism” rationale, creating comparative discourses between countries located in South Asia or Latin America, for example. Understandably, countries within a region are to a great extent affected by similar cultural, linguistic and economic forces and often share deeprooted histories and legacies. At the same time, countries in different regional groupings sometimes share more aspects of social situations and physical environments than they do with countries in their own regions. While the methodology of comparative studies does allow for temporal, spatial and thematic comparisons between countries, very often thematic comparisons are bounded within spatial clusters. Thus, for example, when child labor is analyzed, a typical point of comparison is the situation in India and Bangladesh. When school-based approaches for preventing child labor are studied, the subjects are often Brazil’s Bolsa Escola and Mexico’s Progressa. Organizers of the current seminar made a deliberate exception to this norm. There has also been a growing appreciation of the potential of Indo-Brazilian collaboration among policymakers in the two countries. On a number of international issues, collaboration between Brazil and India has been gaining momentum. However, almost all of the official exchange between the two countries in the field of development has remained primarily among leaders in higher education management, biotechnology, informatics, trade agreements and other areas- in other words, among the elites who dominate the mainstream economy. Children and Adolescents Growing Up In Poverty 176 While Brazil and India both have striking similarities in terms of social inequalities and civil...
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Feb 16, 2012
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