Child Interviews: Experiences from the Home Alone Project

This 35-page report shares the experiences of the Spanish non-governmental organisation (NGO) CrozzCom, which in 2004 launched a participatory action research project called Home Alone with children ages 7-15 years of age caring for younger siblings in León, Nicaragua. The overall goal of the Home Alone project is to involve these children - many of whom are living in poverty and left alone at home without guidance and/or protection from adults - in a participatory process of improving their situation by engaging them (through photography, video, story telling, and advocacy) in the identification of their problems and in the crafting of "meaningful interventions based on their experiences and
perspectives." The idea is that, "As co-producers and storytellers in a testimony video
documentary, and also a photo exhibition, the children are empowered to communicate their experiences and concerns about their lives as caretakers....By sharing ideas and identify solutions, parents, policymakers and persons in decision making positions can take actions for social change."

The report details the Home Alone methodology for child-centred participatory research, also sharing observations about the strategy of using photography in research with children. It is based on a critical review of material originating from the project itself, as well as on information collected through unstructured observations during meetings and talks with the children participating in the project, community leaders and researchers during fieldwork in the project area.

Specific strategies for helping child participants in research to feel empowered by the process are elaborated throughout the report. For example, in September 2005, Home Alone organised a workshop for child participants called "What is an interview?" Prior to the workshop, CrozzCom sent out personal invitations to the children with the portrait photographs of each child, date, place and time for the workshop. Once present, children were provided with a 6-page printed brochure - featuring photographs the children took themselves as part of a February 2005 workshop (in which 14 girls and 18 boys were trained in basic photography and given disposable cameras to document what they do a normal day when alone at home while their parents are working), as well as pictures of the adults in the Home Alone team. The purpose of this material was to explain again why and how information about them is being collected, and by whom and how it would be used; in short, what is an interview, and why is CrozzCom interviewing me?! Organisers also wanted the children to have tangible and visual documentation from earlier activities that they could show to their parents and other family members. They stressed that, in an effort to make the material compelling to all children in the group (some of whom were illiterate), the brochure was was image-centred; any text that was included was written in simple language and placed in "balloons" in a comic style. "The brochure showed to be a valuable communication tool and an efficient icebreaker during the introductory discussion about the forthcoming individual interviews."

Printed material featuring their own photography, however, was only the beginning of the process of helping the children understand the idea of interviewing as an action research concept (which they themselves would later be participating in). After an introduction and training session in using the video camera and the voice recorder, organisers carried out a role-play in which the children had the opportunity to put their new skills into practice, conducting mini-interviews with a peer of choice or a facilitator; each child was then interviewed as well. Afterward, all children were given the opportunity to listen and watch their own mini-interviews. The goal was to familiarise children with the equipment and to give them an idea about the feelings they might experience being in front of a video camera or a voice recorder during an interview. Organisers closed the role-play activity by handing out an individual pack of "interview tools" to each child which contained a notebook Mi Libreta with the logo of the Home Alone project and a set of coloured pencils; the idea was that the children could use the notebook as a way to express their feelings, concerns, and suggestions with organisers between workshops. Finally, organisers asked the children to fill in the last page of the brochure, where they could choose whether they preferred to be interviewed alone or with a friend, at home or at the community house, with the video camera or just with the voice recorder. "To our surprise, all but two children wanted to be interviewed with the video camera. Also, almost half of the children wanted to do it at the community house instead of doing it at their own homes. Fortunately, all children wanted to participate."

This report goes on to detail communnication strategies associated with the process of planning and organising the interviews, "warming-up" the child to be interviewed, seeking informed consent, and carrying out the interview itself. To describe just a bit of what this final step involved, during one-hour-long interviews conducted in Spanish (without "trusted adults"; no children chose to be accompanied), the children's own photographs were used as visual stimuli. "Before talking about the photographs in detail we let the children look through their photographs and to comment them freely. We might begin with, 'please, look through your photographs and tell me a little bit about them, and take your time'. Most of the children first looked through the photographs silently, but if given enough time and if not interrupting them, sooner or later they started to comment [on] their photographs....After that the children had looked through the photographs, the interviewer asked if they wanted to tell us more about a particular photograph of their own choice....Our experience shows that when children notice that you are truly concerned about their feelings, opinions and experience they tend to open up and the conversation
gets more fluent." A question guide emphasising "open questions" (e.g., "Could you tell
me what you do during a day?") was used as a complementary tool during the interviews. "After the interview, the children were encouraged to interview one of the facilitators as a way to offer some 'power balance' into the situation. The children were also allowed a lot of time to watch the footage of the interview. We always told the children that they just had to tell us if they wanted us to take away something they had said earlier during the interview."

Reflections from the February 2006 fieldwork process are offered here as well. To highlight only one insight offered in this section, CrozzCom stresses community leaders' central role in sustaining action research by maintaining relation and contact with the children and their families. To draw on this influence, when organisers noticed that there was some talk among community members that Home Alone had created expectations that could not be fulfilled, they planned a meeting for community leaders. "To create a relaxed atmosphere we initiated the meeting with a photo session, taking a group photograph of all the community leaders. Before beginning the meeting we asked the community leaders for their permission to record the meeting on video....As a way to assess the understanding of the project among the group we divided the members into four groups to discuss what they think that the project is about; to list three good things and an unlimited number of bad things, and finally how they as community leaders want to
collaborate...."

In the final section of the report, CrozzCom provides a number of recommendations based on their experiences with Home Alone. Here are a few highlights:

• By involving the children as photographers, "very good visual documentation of
  the different activities that they carry out every day" - information that "outsiders" would probably otherwise never been privy to - was obtained. CrozzCom characterises this as "tangible material that could be of use for children and their communities when the project ends."
• "[P]hotography is a good way for involving children of all ages and both genders, even those who have limited writing and drawing skills, in research. It is also a good way to involve the children's parents and other family members in the data collection."
• "[T]he method not only lets the children collect authentic information about themselves, but also interpret and analyze the same information, which in turn can give the children some sense of ownership of the project." When describing how she feels when watching her video photo album, one 13-year-old said, "It gives me company when I am feeling alone."
• "When using the children's own photographs during the interviews we felt it was important to be familiarized with the photographs well before the interview. If a child notices that an interviewer does not know the photographs, this can produce feelings of distrust and disappointment in the child."
• Let children interpret their own photographs - a photograph of a smiling child doing dishes may lead to different conclusions than the obvious, and may also spur questions aobut, say, what happens if a child does not fulfill his or her obligations at home.

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