The Children’s Public Welfare Development Center of the Leadership Matrix Network (北京博源拓智儿童公益发展中心), a Beijing organisation that focuses on the design and management of charity projects, has released new guidelines for the use of children’s information in the charity sector. The guidelines were officially released on November 20th, which was also World Children’s Day and the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This document represents a new attempt to create a normative guideline for charitable organisations in this field, after the Leadership Matrix Network’s previous guidelines for organisations and front-line workers who deal with children.
The new guidelines aim to arouse more rational and objective thinking about children’s information protection in the charity sector, put forward normative suggestions for the collection, storage, disclosure and use of children’s information, respond to the problems faced by practitioners in terms of internal governance, publicity and advocacy, fundraising and media reports, and strengthen the concept of children’s information protection, standardise their own behaviour, show the sector’s self-discipline to those who are concerned with children’s causes, and jointly protect children’s happy childhood.
Leadership Matrix Network hopes to join hands with partners from children’s charities to call for the following — uphold the original intention of protecting children’s rights and interests, use children’s information more regularly and professionally in future work, follow the basic principles of children’s information use, abide by laws and regulations, always consider the best interests of children, respect children’s wishes, and bring children’s information use norms into institutional management, fundraising, publicity and advocacy, reporting and other aspects of the organisations’ work. Appropriate information processing methods are adopted to give each child adequate protection and respect depending on the particular situation of each child.
