CLARISSA used Systemic Action Research to identify, evidence, and test innovative actions to tackle the drivers of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL) in the leather supply chain in Bangladesh and the adult entertainment sector in Nepal.
At the heart of the programme were 25 Action Research groups (ARGs) of either working children or small business owners who developed their own evidence on specific system dynamics that hold the problem of WFCL in place. Either via participatory causal analysis of 400 life stories by children, or through other participatory methods used to map system dynamics and understand the challenges of small informal businesses, the ARGs used the systemic understanding to identify leverage points to focus their energy.
Over 12 – 18 months, groups were facilitated through iterative cycles of evidence gathering, development of theories of change, planning and taking actions, and reflecting and consolidating learning from actions. As part of the programme’s monitoring and evaluation system, all group processes were documented in detail, creating the programme’s action research data stream. In the interest of making the process recoverable, each of the group processes was then written up by the facilitators, providing rich and compelling stories of the successes, challenges and deep learning of these groups. We invite others interested in taking such a programmatic approach to read these detailed accounts from the ARGs in the links below written by those closest to the process.
This research paper explores the findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with business owners operating spa and massage parlours, khaja ghars…
The CLARISSA Social Protection (SP) intervention provided six months of unconditional cash transfers to every household in the Gojmohol neighbourhood,…
CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) has a participatory and child-centred approach that supports children to gather…
The CLARISSA Social Protection intervention’s objective is to support people in building their individual, household, and group capacities. Our hypothesis…
Creativity, teambuilding and cooperative learning provide children with greater leverage in combating the worst forms of child labour (WFCL) that mostly…
Children are disproportionately vulnerable to harms and adverse living conditions such as abuse, harassment, exploitative labour, and environmental pollution. In…
This Research and Evidence Paper presents the theory-based and participatory evaluation design of the Child Labour: Action-Research- Innovation in South…
CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) is a large-scale Participatory Action Research programme which aims to identify,…
Despite decades of interventions aiming to reduce child labour, children’s engagement with exploitative work remains widespread, particularly in South Asia….