Including beneficiary voices in the design of development programmes is crucial to ensuring their success. While most development practitioners recognise this, we often struggle to do it in a meaningful way. At the Danish Children and Youth NGO Network (C&Y Network), we have begun using Action Research as a means of including the voices of children and young people in our programme design.
This note reviews experiences from three Action Research studies conducted by the C&Y Network and discusses some important learning outcomes. We learned a great deal from each Action Research process. This includes learning on how to involve children in research; making compromises to support the inclusion of local voices; and how to ensure sustainable action based on the research. We hope that this will provide useful lessons for others embarking on similar Action Research projects
