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.
Since 2013, researchers from the Centre have coordinated a number of projects to expand understanding 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 (2013-2016)
Our Voices was the first project in this programme of work. It supported projects in Europe to develop participatory work with children who had experienced sexual violence.
It engaged children and young people in Albania, Bulgaria and England to understand what they felt were the issues around childhood sexual violence in their local areas; what they felt needed to happen to prevent sexual violence; how young people could be involved in these actions and what would help or hinder young people's engagement in prevention efforts.
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 & 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 aged 11-25 from Albania, Bulgaria, and England to explore their roles in prevention efforts
- a European roundtable and conference
- Four youth-led prevention projects 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 (2015 – 2017)
LEAP against sexual violence supported children and young people affected by sexual violence in Europe by strengthening and facilitating participatory practice.
Its purpose was to build capacity of specialist support services to listen to, support, respect and protect children and young people affected by sexual violence and enable them to support and advocate for others. 88 professionals from specialist sexual violence support services took part together with over 40 children and young people from Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK.
Partner services supporting children and young people’s involvement 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 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.
Our Voices Too (2016 – 2020)
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.
Small Steps (2020- 2022) (sister project)
Small Steps was a youth-led participatory action research project in Albania.
A sister-project of the Our Voices programme, one of our project partners, Different & Equal (Albania) were the grant holders for this work. Professor Silvie Bovarnick coordinated this project.
Six young women aged 17 – 26 took part in the project. Through 18 peer interviews, the six young researchers elicited youth perspectives on experiences of accessing support and justice in relation to sexual violence and trafficking, with the aim to promote child-friendly and victim centred systems in Albania. The research findings were disseminated nationally and internationally. A young survivor-led monitoring panel was established to guide the development of victim centred and child-friendly systems.
Small Steps was funded by Porticus.
Our Voices III (2020 – 2023)
Our Voices III included a number of components. One of these was a global Delphi study (involving 58 participants including practitioners, academics, adult survivor advocates and 23 young survivors) to establish consensus on the potential outcomes associated with adopting a participatory approach with children and young people with lived experience of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
In addition to the Delphi study, Our Voices III 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.
A PhD forum also evolved as part of OVUN as it was recognised that those undertaking doctoral studies could benefit from a space to come together to share knowledge and discuss key issues.
Our Voices III was funded by Oak Foundation.
Elevating Our Voices (2024 – 2025)
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. We hope this can support others working in the sector to develop safe and meaningful approaches to engaging with young survivors in their work.
Elevating Our Voices was supported by Tides Foundation.