Watering the Young Stakeholder Participation Tree

Abstract

Investments to strengthen partnerships with children and young people have shed light on the operation of two parallel worlds with respect to water, sanitation, and hygiene. These worlds do not function at cross purposes, but their potential synergies are almost wholly unknown. The relatively more visible of the two worlds is produced through traditional water, sanitation, and hygiene programming, in which the sector’s responsibilities are understood to be predominately technical: assessing the physical properties of underground and surface water, designing latrines, providing soap for hand washing. The less visible world is the one produced through the social experiences of children and young people, day in and day out, for whom dangerous and uncouth water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions are matters of exclusion, inequality, violence, humiliation, and discrimination.

This article does not address the dynamics between the technical and social worlds described just now, because, in truth, there really are none to speak of. The focus, instead, is on the nature of the social world that direct consultations with children and young people are bringing to light, and on the challenges for decision makers to do something useful with this information through children’s lenses.