Home Alone

The project's central approach is encouraging and enabling children to share their knowledge and ideas, both about their own situation and about how to support other children in taking part in the issues that affect them. This approach is based on the premise that children have the potential and capacity to contribute to their own development. To that end, Home Alone draws on a series of methodologies and tools that facilitate the participation of children in all phases of the research process: from the gathering of the data to the analysis and the dissemination of the results. In this sense, the research is described as "participatory action".

Specifically, organisers work to engage children to participate through fun, attractive, and meaningful activities. Photography, video, child-led interviews, and advocacy are central elements. Some of the particular techniques include:

• Children are familiarised with the use of single-use cameras so that they can document whichever elements of their everyday lives, as well as the lives of their brothers and sisters, that they choose. The objective is to collect authentic information about home-working children's reality and interests with a minimum of guidance or direction from researchers.
• Participants later act as storytellers in a video documentary by explaining in their own words the meaning of the images they have created. Using the children's own photographs as visual stimuli during the interviews is a technique for engaging children in the process of interpreting, analysing, and categorising the collected data (the photographs). The aim here is to use face-to-face communication, expressed through the video medium, to enable children to communicate their concerns in their own environment, to be shared with influential policy makers in these alternative types of "meetings".
• In an effort to show the human faces behind the work, as well as to promote and increase children's participation in the issues that affect them, a video research diary will be created. This video will be used to inspire others, and as a tool for capacity-building, self-assessment, and evaluation.

Ongoing evaluation during the course of the project is informing its shape and resulting in the rethinking of its strategies. For instance, through evaluation of methods and analysis of the photographs taken by the children early on in the project, organisers identified some shortcomings (e.g., few photographs give detailed information about the children’s work at home). In response, they developed a training workshop on basic photography and visual storytelling. Scheduled to be held in León during the second field research phase in February 2005, the workshop will aim both to make sure that the children have a clear understanding of the use of the camera as a method for collection of data and to improve their skills in basic photography and visual storytelling. During the initial planning of this workshop, researchers were not able to find any materials on basic photography for children in Spanish. Thus, CrozzCom is working to plan, design, produce, field-test, revise, evaluate and distribute a training manual on basic photography in English and Spanish for children participating in research and development programmes and projects.

The information obtained during the project will be shared in different media, apart from printed academic research reports, in an effort to maximise awareness and further exchange of experience and ideas by disseminating findings widely. Among the planned outputs are the development of presentation and communication material, the compilation of a photo album, and the establishment of a Home Alone website. To cite a specific example, during the research and preparation work for the February 2005 training workshop, researchers gathered information about other projects and programmes that also use photography for children’s participation. The idea is to build an existing body of research and experience so that best practices as well as lessons learned can be shared with others working in the field. To organise and structure the information, a database on children's photography has been planned and designed. Possible outputs from the Children Photography Database - such as a website directory and other publications - will be explored during field work in February and March 2005.

Children, Rights.

Organisers say that, while preliminary research indicates that there may be a large number of home-working children, "these children are rarely taken into consideration in discussions about children's rights and child work since they do not have salaried work, and they are not 'in the streets'. These children run a major risk of having their rights violated as they often live in poverty and are left at home without any adult supervision on a regular basis. Still, poor families are dependent on these children while parents and older siblings are working outside the home."

As of October 2004, approximately 300 photographs taken by the children involved in the project had been printed. Organisers state that "the experiences in the Home Alone project clearly show that children are very capable taking photographs and that they really like the visual story-telling method as photography offers." They stress that the children and their families have given informed consent for the use of the photographs by the researchers and the communicators, and are consulted each time a photograph is considered for use in different media as part of the project.

The Barcelona-based CrozzCom - Communication for the Development in Action is an NGO working to facilitate collaboration with other NGOs, academics, media professionals, and development practitioners, especially those working to protect children's rights. Organisers say "We believe that visual methods and tools, such as video and photography have much to offer for researchers and development practitioners that work for the wellbeing of children".