Children and Young People's Participatory Research and Communication for Change

Aligned with Wellcome's commitment to leveraging public partnership - throughout the cycles of response, recovery and resilience/sustainable preparedness - to inform research, create trusted research, and increase the access and use of research more equitably across communities, this project will (1) Fill a current gap in children and young people (CYP) insights around Covid-19 and other issues of health and science related research, (2) Equip young people with participatory research and multi-media production skills, and (3) Develop a scaleable participatory model of research and communication for change. To achieve this, UNICEF C4D, a leader in using communication strategies to empower CYP as critical actors in research and development, will partner with innovative multi-media platforms -- inclusive of video, community radio, and mobile-based platforms -- to facilitate CYP-led cross-country surveying, personal stories (via video), in-depth interviews (with/by CYP), and deliberative dialogues (via community radio, video and mobile-based platforms), that will uncover CYP needs, behaviours and experiences with COVID-19 and other priority health and science challenges. UNICEF and its partners will develop a replicable model and partnership base for CYP-led research and engagement to influence social and behaviour change to support future joint research engagement to inform policy and programmatic decision making.