Earlier in 2022, the Our Voices project team at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre (SYLRC), were awarded funding from Research England to carry out co-produced research and capacity-building activities. Using these funds, we designed a short-term project entitled 'Progressing Participation as Protection'. This project – which formed part of the wider Our Voices III project – aimed to support dialogue between young people in different countries about the relationship between participation and protection rights in the context of child sexual abuse and exploitation.

We worked with our Young Researchers' Advisory Panel (YRAP) at the Centre to design a series of workshops. We then engaged partners in Uganda - Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL) and Kenya – Kenya Alliance for Advancement of Children (KAACR) – to deliver these workshops to groups of young people affected by child sexual abuse and exploitation. The project provided a platform to allow young people to share their views about the value of participation, from their perspectives.

We engaged podcast producer, Tanika Trent-McSherry, to curate and bring together key messages from YRAP in the UK, the 'Raising Voices' group of young people in Uganda and the 'Vocal Stars' group of young people from Kenya about the value of participation in this context.