Good Treatment Campaign

Viva’s vision is to see children safe, well and fulfilling their God-given potential. Central to this vision is a desire to see children not only treated well by the adults around them, but also for the children themselves to be aware of how they should be treated and to actively ensure their own good treatment. We launched this campaign as a way of children learning how to expect to be treated, and enabling them to share these messages with others in their community.

How does it influence the city?

The programme engages with people in the wider community who are not already linked to the network. The campaign is time focused and broad, allowing many people to identify with the aim and join in to achieve a bigger impact. The bigger the event, the bigger the reach, the more people that can be educated about good treatment of children, and we can start to see a shift in understanding, attitude and mindset. The fact that children are delivering the message is especially powerful, as it reinforces the fact that children have a voice that must be respected, and that they can contribute to the change.

Methodology

The Good Treatment Campaign was originally run by Viva’s network in Bolivia and was piloted by networks globally in 2015.

Children are trained on the issue and how to safely carry out the campaign, and then encouraged to ask people to promise to commit to good treatment of children by signing a Promise Card which contains 5 Statements on good treatment based on these below:

  1. Tell them that you love them every day
  2. Listen to what they have to say and spend time with them
  3. Accept them as they are and recognise their qualities
  4. Support their learning and train them to accept good values
  5. Teach them responsibility and help them to resolve conflicts

In areas where the network has a specific issue they want to raise, they adapt the campaign to include those elements. For example, networks in India are currently running the Good Treatment Campaign for Girls to raise awareness of the importance of treating girls equally to boys.

Children have immense potential to effect change in their communities. As a result, they are the key drivers. However, as they are being encouraged to speak directly with adults, often those they do not know, they work together with trained adults who accompany groups of children for safety.

The reach of these programmes has the potential to be large and when repeated over a few years they are often followed up with media coverage and government engagement. This is particularly strong if the children manage to gather a large number of promise signatures.

In Bolivia, September is a whole month dedicated to good treatment, built off the success of the Good Treatment Campaign. You can read more about the campaign in Bolivia last year here.

Find out more?

If you would like to find out more about the Good Treatment Campaign, and how you could use it in your schools, churches and community, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us on (+44) 1865 811 660 or info@viva.org

You can read the Good Treatment Campaign 2018 Summary Report here.

Other resources that may be helpful are: the Children’s Good Treatment Campaign complete document June16  (Español: Campaña del Buen Trato a la Niñez documento)