Proiectul de formare de formatori în drepturile copilului desfăşurat de Federaţie a luat sfârşit. Proiectul s-a desfăşurat in 10 ţări din regiune iar proiectul din România a fost considerat un exemplu de bună practică. Proiectul a fost co-finanţat de Comisia Europeana şi UNICEF.

In cadrul proiectului au beneficiat de o formare cu durata de 8 zile, 28 de personae, reprezentanţi ai ONG-urilor, autorităţilor locale şi ai Autorităţii Naţionale pentru Protecţia Drepturilor Copilului.

Proiectul a iniţiat un Grup consultativ naţional la care au fost invitaţi reprezentanţi ai instituţiilor şi organizaţiilor care desfăşoară proiecte sau sunt interesate de drepturile copilului. Grupul consultativ a fost preluat şi continuă să funcţioneze în cadrul programului “Drepturile copilului sunt lege” al ANPDC.

Un rezultat important al proiectului este traducerea Manualului formatorului care este parte dintr-un kit de formare care conţine şi foarte multe documente internaţionale şi regionale privind drepturile omului şi drepturile copilului.

Manualul a fost realizat în versiune electronică sub forma unui pachet cu 2 CD-ROM. Un CD-ROM conţine varianta în limba română a Manualului iar cel de al doilea conţine kit-ul original, în limba engleză cu link-uri la materialele bibliografice. In versiunea română s-au păstrat titlurile în limba engleză pentru a facilita regăsirea capitolelor respective şi utilizarea link-urilor din versiunea originală.

Ambele versiuni sunt acum accesibile şi de pe site-ul FONPC.

Menţionăm că atât Manualul cât şi restul documentelor sunt publice şi accesul este liber şi gratuit.

    As established by the Needs Assessment Report carried out at the beginning of Phase I, the general level of child rights awareness in the region was low while the overall realization of child rights, in line with the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, was reported to progress slowly and Romania is not an exception.

    The least progress was perceived as being in the observance of the child participation principle and in the implementation of special protection measures. Experience in rights-based programming and advocacy training in the region was low. An unsupportive environment and societal, political, cultural and religious factors or traditions -along with insufficient knowledge, skills and abilities - were reported as the main obstacles to more effective advocacy. Consultation mechanisms between the civil society sector and the government were perceived as rather weak and there was insufficient dissemination of information regarding the goals set out in A World Fit for Children (outcome document of UN Special Session on Children, 2002).

    As in the other countries of the region, large numbers of Romanian children targeted by this project have failed to benefit from the socio-economic transition and, in fact, they are disproportionately represented among the new poor and marginalized populations. The situation of children is compounded by the widespread ignorance of child rights. Despite the fact that Romania was among the first countries, which have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is rarely a coherent and effective child rights approach to either legislation or planning.

    The Federation of NGOs Active in Child Protection Romania (FONPC) was involved in the project from the beginning. It participated in the process of collecting data for the Needs Assessment Report as for the Index of trainers and the Index of child’s rights documents/publications. FONPC also selected the trainees for the sub-regional TOT, which took place in Tirana , Albania , in December 2003. Six Romanian trainers were trained in child’s rights advocacy.

    The main point of the Federation’s strategy for the next years is to support the NGOs members to be more involved in advocacy activities and to shift the service providing approach to the rights based approach.

    To this aim, a project for developing a Training Resource Center was started by FONPC in the framework of a French – partnership. The Center is aimed to support the NGOs members of the Federation, which provide training for the professionals in different field of child protection. The Federation will provide training of trainers in cross cutting issues as: children’s rights, non-discrimination, intercultural approach or European building. These themes will be included in the usual trainings of NGOs.

    The National Authority for the Protection of Children’s Rights (ANPCR) Romania has an information/training programme on children’s rights and new Romanian legislation for the professionals working with children. The programme is also financed by the European Commission. FONPC was invited to participate at the meetings of the Steering Group of this project and contacts with the coordinator of the programme were established. The programme will be part of the Country Advisory Group and the experts of the programme are ready to support the LNCO project in Romania with the external evaluation.

    2. Overall objective

    To contribute to the realization of children’s rights in Romania by building up strong advocacy skill base.

    3. Project purpose

    To build the national child rights training capacity in Romania .

    4. Specific objectives

          o To train a group of 30 national cadre of trainers on children’s rights w ho can further apply the knowledge of child rights in their daily working practice (training and rights-based programming)
          o To develop a good quality child-rights training curriculum, methodologies and materials available at national level
          o To strengthen national child-rights training networks
          o To improved skills and capacity of teaching staff and civil society organizations to train, advocate and lobby policy makers to defend and protect children’s rights

    5. Target groups

    The ultimate beneficiaries of the Leave No Child Out Project are children who do not have full access to their rights and whose voices are not heard in decision-making processes.

    The direct beneficiaries of the project are 30 trainers selected from: NGOs and public training institutions. The main goal of the project is to make these trainers able to use the knowledge provided by the training in their immediate activity. A special focus of the project will be on training of young people as peer educators.

    NGOs – Romanian NGOs working for children are not necessarily the most visible or influential, but they are often among the most active civil society groups. Nevertheless, they still tend to be quite weak – small, under-funded and lacking expertise - and their approach is often one of services providing as opposed to empowerment through rights-based advocacy and programmes. They often limit themselves to implementing small projects and have not won a place at the policy reform dialogue table as a partner with governments. Their voice is generally unheard in the public and political arena.

    The project will strengthen advocacy efforts and build capacity among NGOs to improve policies, laws, communication and practices relating to children and their families, in the context of CRC implementation. NGO participants/beneficiaries will be selected on the basis of their track record as advocates/trainers.

    Public training providers –The current project will raise awareness and build capacity of public training providers to incorporate children’s rights issues into the mainstream of their work. It will enable them to better implement the CRC to respond to country specific concluding observations of the Committee on Child Rights and to move towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

    Through adopting the rights-based analytical framework, more far-reaching strategies for implementing effective policy and practice will be realized. Participants will be carefully chosen on the basis of their capacity to influence others and have an impact on child-related policies and programmes.

    6. Activities

     6.1. Translation of core parts of the Child Rights Resource Kit

     The Child Rights Resource Kit was drafted in the first phase of the LNCO project. It is a compilation of documents regarding the child rights and its core is a training manual useful for trainers in children’s rights.

    The translation in Romanian of the core of the Kit will provide the trainers with a very useful tool for their future work. The estimated number of pages is about 700. The translation will be supervised and the Manual will be available on CD-ROM. The Romanian CD-ROM will contain only the core of the manual, the trainers having available the original CD-ROM with all bibliographic references.

    In the project there are foreseen 100 copies of the CD-ROM but it will be available at request for the NGOs, public institutions and young people as well as the original CD-ROM.

    6.2. Selection of the trainers

     The project will select the trainers among those trained in the sub-regional TOTs organized in the first phase of the project and among the trainers of the ANPCR programme. Experienced international trainers will be invited to guide the trainers. The project will facilitate the preparation of the training by the trainers and will ensure that they will provide with report in two weeks after the training.

    6.3. Selection of trainees

    A profile of trainee will be drafted. The selection of trainees will be based on this profile and on the expertise of the candidates. In the both training sessions a balanced number of NGOs representatives and public trainers will take part. An agreement will be made with the trainees regarding the follow-up activities.

    Young people participation will be encouraged.

    6.4. Training sessions

     Two training sessions will be organized, one in Bucharest and one in a region of Romania depending of the origin of candidates. The training sessions will last for 8 days.

    6.5 Follow-up activities

    The project coordinator and an UNICEF representative as well as groups of trainees will assist to at least 4 trainings by NGO and 4 by public training institutions in which the trainees use the knowledge got in the training of the project. The visits will be organized by the project with the contribution of the participants’ organizations/institutions. The number of participants will be 15 – 20 per training.

    FONPC has another project “Resource training Center” aiming to support the NGOs members which provide training in different fields of child welfare and protection. FONPC will provide the trainers belonging to NGOs members with trainings in several crosscutting issues: intercultural approach, non-discrimination, children’s rights, and European citizenship. In the first phase of this project, 14 trainers were trained in intercultural approach and non-discrimination. The TOT was organized in two sessions for 3 days and the expert trainers were 2 French trainers recognized as European trainers.

    The “Resource training Center” is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affaires from France and will last for 3 years (2006 – 2009). In this way, the two projects (LNCO and Resource training Center) are complementary and coherent.

    7. Resources

     7.1. Project coordinator

    The project will hire a coordinator for 9 month. He/she will be in charge with the overseeing the implementation of the project, organizing the Country Advisory Group, organizing the recruitment of trainers and the selection of trainees, organizing the trainings and drafting the narrative and financial reports.

    The Terms of reference for the coordinator will be drafted by FONPC, which will select him/her together with UNICEF.

    7.2. Country Advisory Group

     A Country Advisory Group (CAG) will be organized in order to ensure the guidance of the project. The CGA will bring additional experience and wisdom to the project and will enrich the project process, broaden its reach and influence and enhance monitoring and evaluation.

    The CAG will be composed by FONPC, ProChild and Save the Children Romania as NGOs representatives and by representatives of National Authority for the Protection of Children’s Rights, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, UNICEF and EC Delegation (ANPCR programme).

    The CAG will meet monthly, each time at the workplace of one of its members. The Agenda and the Minutes of the CAG meetings will be distributed to the members of the CAG and will be attached to the Reports of the project.

    A pre-requisite to membership of the CAG would be the capacity and commitment to comply with the COG’s TOR and to membership obligations.

    FONPC, UNICEF and ANPCR programme will draft the TOR for CAG membership. The main task of the CAG will be to review the work plan and the budget, to monitor the project progress to review the reports.

    In strategic terms, the CAG by the influence of its members will: promote the project; facilitate the access to the policy table, and to other source of funding.

    7.3. Financial resources

    FONPC will contribute with its human resources, with other resources provided by the members and with its premises and equipments.

    8. Timetable of the project 

Month
   

Activity

September 2005
   

Recruitment of coordinator

Contracting the translation of the Kit

October 2005
   

Drafting the TOR for CAG*

Drafting the TOR for trainers

Drafting the profile of trainees

November 2005
   

First meeting of CAG

Selection of trainers

Supervision of translation

December 2005
   

Meeting (s) of trainers (preparation of training)

Finalizing translation

Selection of trainees

January 2006
   

Selection of trainees

Meeting of CAG

Meeting (s) of trainers

February 2006
   

First training session Bucharest

Evaluation of the first session

March 2006
   

Second training session (outside Bucharest )

Meeting of CAG

Evaluation of training

April 2006
   

Follow-up activities in Bucharest and outside

May 2006
   

Follow-up activities in Bucharest and outside

Meeting of CAG

June 2005
   

External evaluation

Meeting of CAG

Reporting

 
   

 

     9. Expected results

      National cadre of trainers on children’s rights created in Romania , who can be drawn upon for further training and rights-based programme development by NGOs and public training institutions

          o Good quality child-rights training curriculum, methodologies and materials available at national level
          o Strengthened national child-rights training networks
          o Improved skills and capacity of teaching staff and civil society organizations to train, advocate and lobby policy makers to defend and protect children’s rights
          o Improved consultation between key actors following participation in child rights policy events co-organized by the project

    10. Evaluation

     The trainers will realize the internal evaluation with the participants and it will be part of their final reports on training. An evaluation questionnaire will be drafted by the trainers to be filled in by the participants.

    The follow-up activities (visits and supervision of the training activities performed by the trained people) are also part of internal evaluation process. The trainers will draft an evaluation grid for the 8 training sessions provided by the participants.

    After the completion of the activities an external evaluation of the project will be performed with the support of the experts of the NAPCR programme.

    The existence of CAG and its activity will have also the role of external evaluation. The documentation of this evaluation will be represented by the minutes of the CAG’s meetings.