About the Our Voices programme

Our Voices is an international programme of work that focuses on the involvement of children and young people who have experienced sexual violence in research, policy and practice.

The programme of work began in 2013 with a grant from the Oak Foundation to the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire in the UK.

The initial project built on pioneering work by Centre staff who were collaborating with young people who had experienced child sexual exploitation in the UK. 

From 2013 to 2025, researchers from the Centre have coordinated a number of projects to expand our understanding and experience of initiating and supporting participatory practice and initiatives with young people who have experienced sexual violence internationally.

About the projects

We have supported opportunities for young people, including young survivors, to come together in groups to discuss, analyse, share, plan, design and develop actions and outputs related to addressing childhood sexual violence. 

Working with partner organisations, we have engaged children and young people in Albania, Bulgaria, Kenya, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Uganda and the UK.

We have also been supported by the Safer Young Lives Research Centre’s Young Researcher’s Advisory Panel (YRAP), who have helped to shape the development of this work.

In many cases new activities were initiated due to gaps and needs that were identified and expressed by young people and the practitioners we collaborated with.

 

Our Voices was the first project in this programme of work. It supported projects in Europe to develop participatory work with children who have experienced sexual violence and engaged children and young people in Albania, Bulgaria and England so they could raise attention to their work on preventing sexual violence.

Children and young people were engaged through partner services who supported their involvement. Partners were: Barnardo's, Engage!, Basis Yorkshire (formerly known as Isis, part of Genesis), Gavroche Association, Pulse Foundation, Different and Equal and Terre des hommes Albania.

Key activities included:

  • a Europe-wide call for information to gather examples of participatory practice related to the issue of sexual violence
  • a series of consultation workshops with 47 young people from Albania, Bulgaria, and England to explore their roles in prevention efforts
  • a European roundtable with service providers, youth, and policymakers was also hosted along with a conference on the opportunities and risks of youth as change-makers in sexual violence prevention
  • youth-led prevention projects were also supported in the participating countries.

In this project, young people identified the value of peer-facilitated and peer-led prevention activities, the need to train and resource young people to do this work, and a desire to implement the ideas they had developed during the project.

Our Voices was funded by Oak Foundation.

LEAP against sexual violence supported children and young people affected by sexual violence in Europe by strengthening and facilitating participatory practice.

Children and young people from Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK took part in this project, supported by partner services.

Partner services were: Barnardo's, Pulse Foundation, Terre des hommes Romania, Stichting Alexander, Terre des hommes Regional Office for South Eastern Europe and Eurochild.

The project included several activities including:

  • the design and delivery of a training program for services
  • the development of communities of practice
  • the design of a life skills and leadership toolkit for young people (which young people were trained to co-deliver alongside partner organisations).

The project also enabled young survivors to launch youth-led prevention and protection focussed projects—using film, art, and other creative media.

LEAP against sexual violence was funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union.

The RISE learning network promoted and facilitated learning on the recovery and (re)integration of children and adolescents affected by sexual exploitation.

It focussed on three regional learning hubs, each with its own regional working group, in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Central Asia.

Family For Every Child and Retrak were our partners on the project which developed and implemented three learning initiatives to capture local learning for influencing recovery and reintegration policy and strengthening practice in this area.

RISE learning network was funded by Oak Foundation.

Being Heard was a global collaborative project we delivered with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI).

It served to involve young people in the 2017 SVRI Forum (an annual international conference that brings together a range of organisations and individuals who are working to understand, prevent and respond to sexual violence) and link researchers with youth to discuss how to engage with them in research.

A scoping review of participatory research on sexual violence against children was undertaken, the findings from which were shared at the SVRI Forum in Brazil and delivery of webinars and attending the SVRI Forum in Brazil 2017.

A range of ethical and practical challenges of involving vulnerable children and young people in participatory research on sensitive issues were highlighted through this work and key considerations for research practice.

Being Heard was funded by Oak Foundation. 

Our Voices Too worked with project partners, Different & Equal, Atina and The National Centre for Child Abuse Prevention (NCCAP) to develop a network of children and young people across Albania, Serbia and Moldova to influence practice on preventing and responding to sexual violence and improve understanding of the need for empowering approaches when working with young people affected by sexual violence.

Following a situational analysis to assess the feasibility of establishing a youth network in these three locations, we supported partners to pilot the Our Voices Toolkit for Young Advocates by training young people affected by sexual violence to become advocates and lead youth‑led advocacy projects tailored to their local contexts.

The network coordinated a series of different learning activities focused on the ethical engagement of children and young people impacted by sexual violence and provided evidence on the use and value of participatory and peer-support models for affected young people across Europe.

Our Voices Too was funded by Oak Foundation.  

Our Voices III was a global study that aimed to build on previous Our Voices projects to reduce child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSA/E) and improved responses by developing, evidencing and championing, ethical child-centred practice and research.

The project conducted a Delphi study to establish consensus on whether—and how—participatory approaches and principles supported prevention of child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSA/E), and responses for those impacted.

It also developed the Our Voices University Network (OVUN) to facilitate global cross‑learning, knowledge sharing, and capacity building among researchers to capture good practice, and promote ethical, participatory, child‑centred research.

Our Voices III was funded by Oak Foundation.  

Elevating Our Voices brings together the learning and key messages we have gathered over the course of a ten-year programme of Our Voices projects.

Culminating in the curated collection of tools and resources found on this site, we share our knowledge around the value, challenges and tensions associated with supporting the participation rights of children and young people who have experienced childhood sexual violence, in the hope of support others working in the sector to develop safe and meaningful approaches to engaging with young survivors in their work.  

Elevating Our Voices is funded by Oak Foundation Children First Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation.

(ADD TEXT)