"Including the voices of children is not just about including their views on certain topics. It is about creating a favourable environment that actively promotes their participation throughout the process, as well as engaging adults."

This report outlines the practical lessons learned by Plan International and Save the Children about their rights-based, participation approach to climate change: child-centred community-based adaptation (CC-CBA). Through a series of case studies, which come from ethnic minorities in the central mountains of Vietnam and typhoon-affected communities in the Philippines, the report explores how participants in the Child-Centred Climate Resilience programme have engaged with CC-CBA activities and consolidates best-practice lessons and recommendations for practitioners and donors.

As the report explains, CC-CBA seeks to ensure the concerns and priorities of children and youth are heard in decision-making around climate change. It uses any number of creative participatory tools to help children identify and prioritise issues that most affect them, including storytelling, interactive drama, dance, or more focused discussions and plenary sessions. Through such activities, children and young people can gain an understanding of climate change and be empowered them with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to catalyse action at home, at school, and in the community. In some countries, children's participation involves challenging social and culturally constructed norms and is sensitive to traditional power dynamics. "However, children regularly bring new ideas or creative solutions. They can engage communities and they could potentially break down the barriers on complex and tricky issues. They often have a better understanding of the science of climate change processes than adults in the community due to their school lessons, and they can draw out the implications for local livelihoods. Their voices can provide a fresh and engaging vehicle through which to advocate to policy makers and call them to account." One suggestion for breaking down barriers to children's engagement is to ensure that parents, teachers, and community members are systematically involved and encouraged to support children's active participation in a range of child-centred and child-led activities.

The case studies from the Child-Centred Climate Resilience project show how children developed stories, games, songs, theatre, and multimedia that other children can relate to, providing a new forum for peer-to-peer learning and for educating the wider community. In all instances, participatory approaches were used as a means of engagement and a space was provided for creative expression. This in turn provided the basis for further exploration, learning, discussion, and action. Children did not just gain experience and knowledge from the songs and storybooks but from the process itself. For example, youth participating in the project came up with creative ways of communicating climate change messages to their fellow Filipinos. In one village, young people produced public service announcements (PSAs); "their short format and humorous depictions by children and young people from within the community make them very appealing to viewers....[P]lacing PSA developments within ongoing education and awareness-raising activities for students helped to maximise the value of PSAs as a learning opportunity."

In addition to exploring how Plan International and Save the Children developed these participatory approaches, the report examines how the organisations have worked to ensure children's voices are heard in community-based adaptation (CBA), which involves ntroducing some of the more slow-onset and long-term impacts of climate change that can be addressed through insurance, social funds, and livelihood diversification. Among the case studies describing how children's involvement in CBA has contributed to climate relisience is one looking at Nguyen Xuan Thong, who had been farming rice and raising pigs with limited success. (He has found it difficult to keep his pigs healthy and gaining weight due to extreme weather in his province.) When Thong's son participated in the project's climate change resilience activities at school, he passed on the information he was learning to his family. Thong was motivated to attend training sessions in which he learned how to use his pig waste to produce biogas - a sustainable energy source - through the installation of a biogas digester. He now shares his newfound knowledge with his neighbours. Lessons learned here include, among others, that forums bringing together relevant scientific bodies with community members should be facilitated within CBA projects to ensure that the exchange of climate-relevant information is readily available, understandable, and practical. Also, interventions must be owned by the participating families, schools, and communities. This is to ensure they are economically viable - i.e., beneficiaries must contribute some of their own funds, time, and/or materials - as well as to ensure the sustainability of the actions after the project completion.

Recognising that long-term systematic change requires mainstreaming CBA into policy planning and development, Plan International and Save the Children in this particular project used Participatory Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (PVCAs), also called Community Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (CVCAs). Through the process of CVCAs, communities, government officials, children, teachers, and project staff worked together to identify the risks that climate change poses to them, as well as their strengths and potential responses to the identified risks. Those responses were then prioritised. Plan International and Save the Children worked with relevant levels of government in the Philippines and Vietnam to incorporate the prioritised responses into policy and planning documents. "Recognising the voices of the community and children in decision-making helps ensure the interventions are matched with community needs and are owned by the community, furthering a project's long-term sustainability." Based on the outcomes of the CVCAs, the projects then provided opportunities for children, schools, community members, and local government units to apply for small grants to help them implement some of the prioritised climate change adaptation actions. This allowed children to design, implement and monitor their own interventions. Organisers note that children and community members should be trained in project management and resource mobilisation. Also, it is important to include the most vulnerable – be they children, indigenous groups, women, or people with disabilities – to understand how climate risks affect them. Case studies illustrate these lessons.

The section of the report on empowering children as agents of change illustrates the importance of a holistic approach to engagement throughout the entire project cycle. As the case studies here illustrate, children and young people can be effective agents for sharing messages, building awareness, and changing behaviour. Utilising communication channels that they feel comfortable with to incorporate climate change messages can empower children to inform others and advocate around this topic. In Vietnam, learning about alternative livelihood models implemented in their community provides students with the opportunity to understand climate change adaptation efforts in their immediate context, while at the same time providing additional skills in how to communicate their experiences. Similarly, the Bulilit Brodkasters (child broadcasters) in the Philippines have not only increased their knowledge and understanding of climate change, but added a skill set in radio presentation and interviewing. "Johnber Kheen Y. Repato was one of the first students who trained to become a Bulilit Brodkaster in Aurora in 2013. During his shows 'Kuya Kheen' (Johnber's stage name) facilitated discussion around the science of climate change, disaster preparedness, the impacts of climate change on children's rights, weather information, and climate change adaptation efforts in communities and schools. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction experts were often invited onto the show to talk about climate change and answer phone-in or text questions from listeners. Research has found that such interactive programming creates a platform for two-way exchanges and learning, boosting the uptake of information."

Finally, the report examines the role of communication to mobilise action and replication. "Communication plays an important role in community-based adaptation (CBA), not only as a means to share information and engage and mobilise communities in behaviour change, but as a useful tool in advocacy for policy makers." It is noted that embracing a combination of strategies and tools widens the reach of CBA communication. "A respected farmer sharing his story allows the audience to imagine how this story relates to their own story, and resonates with their own aspirations and desires. Taking this a step further and providing space for social learning, such as small group discussions, creates a trusting environment where the audience can hear, see and inquire of others who are making successful CBA changes. This builds the familiarity and efficacy of the audience to make changes themselves....Utilising mass media communication can take CBA to another level by helping disseminate stories from any one community to many. However, taking these stories and communications to policy-makers may require a more formal evidence-based approach. Yet empowering children and their communities with the skills and confidence to communicate with decision-makers about their adaptation needs is important as it not only builds their knowledge capital but also strengthens the ties between these two distinctive stakeholder groups." One lesson learned is that, along with training and coaching activities for facilitators, multiple tools should be used to ensure the quality of communication activities. Organisers' experiences indicate that child-led small group communication appears to be the best approach for children to actively facilitate climate change communication.

Based on these case studies, Plan International and Save the Children have put together key recommendations for those looking to design, implement, and monitor effective CBA projects. Among them:

• "A multi-stakeholder approach enables space for the voices of all of those impacted by climate change to be heard, moving beyond governments to civil society, communities and, most importantly, the most vulnerable." In Vietnam, Save the Children is the lead agency and Plan International the sub grantee. In the Philippines, these roles are reversed. Each agency collaborates with their in-country counterparts to design and implement the programme across their project locations. This means that in each country, there are multiple partners working together and collaborating on the project.
• "Communication on climate change needs to be tailored for the specific audience, based on people's existing knowledge and level of understanding. This is particularly important when working with children and youth."