Preventing and Responding to Distress

As part of our mandate to advocate and protect the best interests of children, we must promote their participation in the decisions that affect their lives, and give them a platform to express their own views concerning these matters. They are often the best source of information about their own lives and experiences and can therefore provide the best feedback for programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A lack of reliable and accurate information from children and youth can lead to potential gaps in policy making and less effective programme design and implementation.

However, sometimes children can become distressed during child participation activities, especially if they begin to think about things that make them afraid or they remember painful or frightening events. The purpose of this document is to equip World Vision (WV) field staff to prevent and respond appropriately to distress when children are participating in WV activities.

This document is to be read by WV programme staff, or studied and discussed together by programme teams before planning child participation activities.