A research workshop for Child Friendly Communities and Cities (CFC) will be held in Rome on Nov 25-27, 2009, organized by UNICEF IRC and Childwatch in collaboration with the Children’s Environments Research Group of the City University of New York and the Italian National Committee for UNICEF. The workshop is aimed to establish a common understanding of the protocol and toolkit for the multi-country research study, in addition to facilitating the exchange of experiences with regard to local governance and child rights practices. Participants will include UNICEF focal points, local researchers and municipal officers from the 11 countries participating in the research initiative: Brazil, Philippines, the Dominican Republic, India, Russia, Jordan, Sudan, South Africa, France, Italy and Spain, as well as international researchers.

The CRC research initiative is intended to support improvement of the conditions of children living in urban settings by enabling communities and cities to better assess the degree to which they are fulfilling children's rights, and assisting in the critical self-appraisal of governance structures and processes that are designed to support families and children. The process seeks to promote awareness among stakeholders, sensitize policy makers about children’s rights and generate data on the situation of children in participating cities and communities. The research will yield a flexible set of participatory assessment tools that can contribute to expanding the breadth and quality of data on children’s conditions and improve the cities’ and communities’ monitoring and assessment capacities.

The assessment kit includes a set of community tools - measuring the degree of child friendliness in terms of fulfilment of rights - and a set of governance tools - assessing the relevance and quality of governance structures in support of children. The testing of the community tools has just been concluded in Brazil and the Philippines, two countries with extensive experience in CFC - Brazil and the Philippines. Findings show the assessment tools are easily adaptable to local settings, ensure a high level of participation, and may be utilised by facilitators with limited experience.

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The 2010 Child in the City Conference will take place in Florence, Italy on October 27-29 of next year. The conference is organised on a bi-annual basis by the European Network Child Friendly Cities and the Child in the City Foundation. It is taking place for the first time in southern Europe, after previous venues in Bruges, London, Stuttgart and Rotterdam. Local partners for the 2010 conference include the Istituto degli Innocenti, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, the Italian Committee for UNICEF, the Region of Tuscany, the Province of Florence and the City of Florence.

The Child in the City Conference brings together representatives of local administrations, institutions, universities, associations and civil society organisations that are involved in the promotion of child-friendly cities in Europe and in the world. Key themes of the 2010 Conference will include: the right to play, the right to participate, child poverty and well-being in urban settings and assessment and monitoring tools for child-friendly cities. Some 500 participants are expected.

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