Sharing experiences and research through the Global Resource Centre
Lizet Vlamings
Background
The Consortium for Street Children (CSC) is a global network that exists to give street-connected children a voice, promote their rights and improve their lives. CSC has over 100 members operating in more than 135 countries, united by a commitment to strive for a world where all street-connected children can access all their rights. CSC’s work focuses on three key areas: advocacy, network development and research. Research is central to good development practice, yet past research about street-connected children has been fragmented, hard to access and underused in the development of policies and programmes. This creates the risk that non-governmental organisations and government responses to street-connected children’s issues may be ill-founded, misdirected and/or ineffective. CSC works to address this by helping researchers, policy makers and grassroots practitioners connect with each other. We also produce and share high quality research on children connected to the streets, which keeps our network informed of best practice. We help members to share insights and experiences so that we can grow as a sector.
A unique resource centre
With these aims in mind, CSC created the Global Resource Centre (GRC), which can be accessed from CSC’s main website: www.streetchildren.org. The GRC is a free-to-use online library containing the largest collection of research, reports and articles related to street-connected children. The resources are aimed at academics, practitioners, journalists and the public and can be searched for by topic, country and/or geographic region, among others.
Resources on the GRC are available in many different languages, and new resources are added each week by our team and by network members.
This online platform was built in 2013 with support from HSBC and Aviva. CSC is now further developing the overall website and online library. An upgrade to the GRC will improve: the overall design and navigation; search functions and finding new resources; the email digest; the balance between academic and practitioner resources; and engagement and discussions on important topics and resources.
As the ultimate library of resources for the sector, the GRC is improving awareness and understanding of street-connected children. The online community enables shared learning to strengthen our network and ultimately foster policy and programmatic responses which accurately understand and tangibly improve the lives of street-connected children.
Lizet Vlamings is Advocacy and Research Manager of the Consortium for Street Children
Contact: lizet@streetchildren.org