Lessons from Colombia - promoting children’s rights in the Sierra Nevada jungle

While travelling recently, I was lucky enough to work with a local charity, El Rio Foundation, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Consulting with the team and community stakeholders, including, of course, the children served by the charity, I co-produced a rights-based approach to children’s safeguarding that reflected the unique geography, culture and everyday challenges of the Foundation’s local programmes. Here’s an overview of the project and some of the lessons I’ll take from this unforgettable experience.

The client

El Rio Foundation is a charity that provides a range of support and projects for children and communities in the coastal Sierra Nevada region of Colombia. An offshoot of El Rio Hostel, a tropical haven for backpackers nestled in jungle that was until recently (and to some extent, still presently) run by illegal armed groups and paramilitaries, it’s not the most obvious base for a children’s charity. But the fallout of the region’s very recent history of violent conflict - vast socioeconomic inequalities and paucity of public services - is what made the hostel’s owners want to demonstrate that the emerging tourist economy can work with and for the local community, rather than simply extract from it.

Before Covid, El Rio Foundation was delivering tutoring, sports and arts clubs to roughly 30 children in the local area. When restrictions were lifted, children and families flooded towards these valuable opportunities to socialise, build skills and access opportunities - now more than 500 children access the Foundation’s scaled up programme of activities every week. Additionally, it offers English lessons to all hostel staff and works in two remote indigenous communities - supporting environmental and food sovereignty initiatives and funding teachers at two schools that were abandoned by the state.

The brief

To respond to the opportunities and risks of this massive growth, I was tasked with developing a new child protection and safeguarding policy. Working with the leadership team to assess the Foundation’s needs, we decided to develop a much broader rights-based “Children First” approach - going beyond ‘child protection’ to a comprehensive framework for promoting, upholding and protecting the rights and welfare of children across the Foundation’s work.

Vitally, we wanted this approach to be more than a ‘tick box’ policy document that sits on file without genuinely affecting practice. We wanted to create implementable actions, tools and guidelines that would lead to tangible change within the everyday practice, mindset and culture of the team.

The approach

After mapping key stakeholders, I developed a consultation framework comprising a staff survey, focus groups and interviews, local parents meetings and accessible children’s consultant sessions.

From these, I produced a report outlining my findings and observations and recommendations, a new policy, and a suite of resources to support implementation.

The lessons

1. Be prepared to actually listen

I will never stop learning the value of authentic consultation. Over the years, I’ve co-produced tonnes of policy positions with young people and more recently I gained a certificate in person-centred counselling skills, so my whole ethos is ‘listen’! Even when the solutions seem glaringly obvious - listen first, ask the right questions, then sit back and see how - who knew! - the people experiencing the issue always have the best answers.?

Never was this so stark as when faced with writing and rolling out a new policy for a multi-cultural, multi-lingual team working in the complex social, cultural and political context of the Colombian jungle!?

2. The value of diverse voices

As a relative outsider at El Rio Foundation - not just of the organisation but of the culture, geography and language - I couldn’t fall back on off-the-shelf templates or tried-and-tested approaches. I relied so heavily on the genuine engagement of diverse stakeholders.

Instead of just working to please the leadership team, I took a rights-based approach from the get-go - coordinating a comprehensive programme of community consultation, so that those affected by the new policy were central to shaping it. From developing games to help children articulate what makes them feel safe, to supporting staff to define child protection protocols in the absence of public services - this truly was an exercise in inclusive co-design, and it made for a better policy as a result.

3. Make it easy and applicable

A ‘safeguarding policy refresh’ doesn’t scream, “exciting new tool for your work with children!”. So my challenge was to make this something that actually resonated with staff and volunteers as something that could empower them in their everyday work.?

Again, the key was listening: What are their hopes and fears for this policy? What are the child protection issues they come across most often? What would make their job easier? And importantly - what are the spaces, processes and tools they are already using, that we can piggy back safeguarding onto?

So instead of simply handing over a new policy, I also developed a strategic review, supported with a suite of resources - step-by-step guides, role descriptions and an implementation timeline. Together, we integrated children's rights and safety into everyday conversations - setting up a Whatsapp group and calendar invites for the newly coordinated ‘safeguarding committee’, adding dedicated agenda items to existing team meetings, and initiating a standard induction and all-team training programme.

4. Relationships are key to culture change

In any programme for organisational change, relationships will underpin its success. Since our ambition for El Rio Foundation went beyond a simple policy to a wholesale culture shift, it was essential to tap into the very ways of being, thinking and working that shape the standard at El Rio foundation, so much of which manifests between people: Between me as a consultant with the team responsible for driving my recommendations; between members of the team; between the team and key stakeholders such as parents, children and community leaders.

Much of the action we took worked to strengthen relationships and centre these around children’s rights - bringing the whole team together for training, setting up regular parent forums and, vitally, improving the relational standards set by leadership - making expectations clear, demonstrating acceptable behaviours, honouring new norms, and consistently holding the whole team (themselves included) accountable to children’s rights and a “Children First” approach.

Far from an off-the-shelf policy refresh, this project taught me invaluable lessons about recognising the unique nature of every organisation, while also highlighting the approaches and considerations that can make or break projects geared towards organisational change.

You can read more about El Rio Foundation here and donate to their vital work here.?