Life Stories From Kathmandu’s Adult Entertainment Sector: Told and Analysed by Children and Young People

Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) has a participatory and child-centred approach that supports children to gather evidence, analyse it themselves and generate solutions to the problems they identify. The life story collection and collective analysis processes supported children and young people involved in the worst forms of child labour in Kathmandu to share and analyse their life stories. Four hundred life stories were collected and then analysed by children and young people engaged in and affected by the worst forms of child labour, including those who had previously been life storytellers and/or life story collectors. The data was collectively analysed using causal mapping, resulting in children’s life stories becoming the evidence base for revealing the macro-level system dynamics that drive the worst forms of child labour. This paper is a record of the children and young people’s analysis of the life stories and the key themes they identified, which formed the basis of a series of eight child-led Participatory Action Research groups based in Kathmandu.