KIND staff in Europe recently unveiled a new, child-friendly Know Your Rights guide for Ukrainian children and youth in Poland who have been displaced by the war in Ukraine. The guide contains essential information about status, education, actions children and young people can take if they are being harmed, and who to contact for help, among other issues. The guide is geared toward 16- and 17-year-olds and is available in Ukrainian, Polish, and English. KIND and our partner the Ukrainian House also created a series of social media videos to disseminate with the guide which can be viewed here and here.
Identifying the Gap in Child and Youth-Centered Information
“A whole team came together from the KIND community to create this guide because we identified a need for child-friendly information on the rights of children and youth displaced from Ukraine,” said Senior Vice President and Regional Director in Europe Kirsty Thomson. Child-friendly resources help displaced children understand their rights and how to exercise them, and how to access assistance such as legal aid. The project builds on KIND’s expertise giving Know Your Rights presentations to children and youth in the United States and Mexico, an essential part of KIND’s legal education work.
Sixteen and 17-year-olds—and their caregivers and others supporting them—were identified as the target audience. Children in this age range may consider themselves as having reached adulthood and may not be in education or linked in to child protection and welfare systems. As a result, they may not be aware of the rights they have and can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Building on the Strengths of KIND Staff and Partners
A team of 50 pro bono lawyers from Amazon and DLA Piper researched the laws of five countries in the region. KIND then sought feedback from experts, NGO partners, and displaced Ukranian youth and children and synthesized the research into a child and youth-friendly guide. “This project brings together what KIND does best: working in partnership and always thinking from a child’s point of view,” said Kirsty.
Working with the Ukrainian House and Focus Groups with Ukrainian Youth
In the final stages of creating the guide, KIND was privileged to join forces with the Ukrainian House, a migrant-led partner organization based in Poland, working with their youth coordinator to solicit feedback directly from Ukrainian children and youth through a series of focus groups. It became clear that the children and youth did not understand the protections and legal status they had in Poland, their other rights, or where to go for help. Receiving feedback from Ukrainian youth ensured that the guide contained the information children needed to know delivered in a way that children and youth would understand and engage with. KIND worked with a Ukrainian graphic designer from the Ukrainian House to make sure the guide was culturally appropriate. The accompanying videos for social media that KIND and the Ukrainian House created have been viewed more than 30,000 times.
Kirsty said:
Organizations often think they know what children need to hear but they are not asking children directly, ‘What are you worried about? What do you need? How do we get this information to you in a way that makes sense and is engaging?’ The fact that we always had children and youth in mind and that we were able to work with the Ukrainian House throughout the design process and spoke with children and youth directly ensures that this guide is meeting a real need and will be impactful.
Sylwia Katarzyna Brzezinska, staff attorney for KIND in Poland, attended the focus groups and remarked on its impact:
Attending the focus groups and meeting young people from Ukraine was an extraordinary experience. Their commitment to participate in the meeting, their enthusiasm, and their many questions only confirmed for me that this guide is indispensable. Children and young people are keenly interested in what rights they have in Poland, what their options are, where to look for professional help. This guide is a response to the urgent needs of young people, a resource where young people can get reliable legal information from many sources in one place.
The guide will be shared with children and youth through social media, and is also being provided to teachers, schools, local governments in Poland, and UNICEF. A range of local NGO partners and the Ukrainian House are already sharing the guide with children and youth. The guide was recently shared at a celebration hosted by the Ukrainian House for their 15th anniversary and was very well received by participants.
In a related initiative, KIND’s Suzir’ya project works to prevent trafficking, abuse and other serious harm to children displaced from Ukraine by providing access to legal and psychological support for these and other vulnerable children.
KIND could not have completed this project without our many pro bono and NGO partnerships, as well as the children and young people in our focus groups, to whom we are very grateful. The Know Your Rights guide will be the template for other national contexts as KIND works to roll out similar guides in five other countries in the region.
