Activities of the Regional Network Meeting - Manizales
CINDE Colombia hosted the fourth Latin American and Caribbean regional conference organized by the Childwatch International Regional Network in November 2008. A regional network meeting took place in conjunction with the conference. This year the conference was to a large extent connected to the Latin American Young Researchers Training Programme, and the participants of this program were all invited to participate and present the work prepared through the training process.
The regional network meeting discussed future plans for the regional network. The Young Researchers from the Training Programme expressed their opinions regarding their experience on the course and made suggestions for improvement.
Planned network activities for 2009 and 2010:
- The next network meeting will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 22.-23. October 2009
- New organizations will be invited to join the network, as long as they are in line with the research spirit of the network. It is proposed to include institutions from Chile, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. The first two will be incorporated as soon as possible and will be invited to participate in the 2009 regional meeting.
- The communication between members of the network will be strengthened by creating a virtual platform in the UAM-X, accessible to all network members.
- The research progress of youth researchers will be reviewed and analized, feedback will be given to them and the final results will be published.
- Joint cross country investigations will be carried out as part of an overall project. One specific Project will be developed by Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico (which continues with the project initiated by Brazil and Mexico) and another will be conducted by Colombia and Costa Rica. Both are related to political participation of young people.
- A single document will be cooperatively prepared by all members of the Latin American network, to be presented at the international 2009 CWI meeting in Ethiopia, in which the themes of poverty and inequality will be discussed (based on relevant and comparable indicators) and how they affect children, adolescents and youth in our countries. The result will be a contemporary Latin American view, which will be part of discussion at the 2009 meeting. The contribution will be to point out the forms of social exclusion that exists in the region. At the same time the progress and achievements in each country will be identified with regard to the CRC, at its twentieth anniversary. This will be an important input to the network.
- Members of the Network will make presentations at the 2009 meeting in the context of the document prepared by the group.
- Everyone will actively disseminate information abut the meeting and will work on motivating institutions to finance some people´participation at the 2009 meeting.
- Young researchers will present the final results of their research on the 2009 meeting in Buenos Aires, for which the participation of a representative of each group of young researchers is forseen.
- The different conceptual network contributions will be discussed, linked to its analytical and social impact results, assuring to diffuse them widely, as contribution of the Latin American region to the rest of the world.
Participants
Irene Rizzini (Brasil, Ciespi)
Norma del Rio (UAM,México)
Gloria López (Venezuela)
Milena Grillo (Costa Rica Pan y Amor)
Lilian Ortiz (Uruguay, IIN)
Ricardo Fletes (México, U de G)
Graciela Tonón (Argentina)
Marta Arango (Colombia, Cinde)
Ofelia Roldán (Colombia, Cinde
Martha Suárez (Colombia; Cinde)