Building Resilient Futures: Participatory Research on Climate Change, Family Separation, and Children on the Move in South Asia
Family for Every Child is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Martin James Foundation (MJF) to undertake participatory research exploring the links between climate change, family separation, and children on the move across South Asia. This collaboration marks an important step in strengthening evidence and action on child protection in the context of climate change, with a strong focus on the experiences and leadership of children, families, and communities.
Climate change is increasingly recognised as a driver of weakening families and their ability to care for and protect children, leading to unnecessary family separation. Across South Asia, rising floods, droughts, and heatwaves are pushing families to the edge, forcing parents to migrate, disrupting schooling and livelihoods, and leaving children vulnerable to harm and adversity. Yet the intersection of climate change and child protection remains poorly understood and is rarely reflected in policy or practice.
About Martin James Foundation
The Martin James Foundation (MJF) is a philanthropic foundation committed to supporting children and families through evidence-led approaches to care reform and child protection. The Foundation works with partners across the globe to strengthen family-based care systems, prevent unnecessary family separation, and promote the rights and wellbeing of children in vulnerable contexts.
MJF invests in research, innovation, and locally led solutions that address the root causes of harm to children and families. Through strategic partnerships with civil society organisations, researchers, and communities, the Foundation supports initiatives that generate practical evidence and influence policies and systems to better protect children and strengthen family resilience.
The Context
South Asia is facing converging crises. Climate shocks are driving migration and displacement and fragmenting families. Children displaced by climate events face risks of exploitation, trafficking, early marriage, and loss of family connections. Children with disabilities, girls, and those already living in poverty face disproportionate harm.
At the same time, child protection and care responses to climate change are lagging. Policies rarely address family care systems, and kinship networks — often the first line of protection — remain under-researched and under-resourced. Too many children end up in harmful situations, unnecessarily separated from their families when, with the right support, they could remain safely within families and communities.
This child-centred research aims to better understand how climate change affects family structures and children’s mobility, while generating context-specific, participatory evidence that can inform stronger family support systems and help prevent unnecessary separation.
About the Partnership
Family for Every Child, with co-funding support from the Martin James Foundation, is leading an 18-month, multi-country participatory research study across South Asia.
The research will be carried out by local civil society members of the Family network in the region. Local researchers will lead data collection and analysis, ensuring findings are grounded in community experience and informed by local realities.
The study uses PhotoVoice as its primary methodology — a participatory visual approach in which participants document their own experiences through photography and group dialogue. This ensures children and caregivers shape the evidence, rather than simply appearing within it.
The research will explore:
- How climate change exacerbates the drivers of family separation in study locations
- The mental health and wellbeing impacts on children and caregivers experiencing climate-related movement
- How kinship care systems are responding and what support they need
- How girls, boys, and children with disabilities experience and perceive the risks of separation during climate crises
- What actions governments, civil society organisations, and communities can take to strengthen families and prevent harmful child migration
The research aims to co-create recommendations with children, families, and other stakeholders to integrate family-strengthening strategies into climate adaptation and child protection policies. Findings will be shared through webinars, practice exchange workshops, and a synthesis report designed to reach practitioners, policymakers, and global networks working on care reform.
“Children and families in South Asia are among those most directly affected by climate change, yet their voices are largely absent from both research and policy responses. This study will help change that. Through the leadership of our local CSO members, and by co-creating evidence with children and families, we will generate research that is not only rigorous but genuinely reflective of those closest to the context — and that can be used to strengthen the systems that keep families together.”
– Jonathan Blagbrough, Senior Programme Advisor, Family for Every Child
“The impacts of climate change are placing growing pressure on families, with serious consequences for children. Families across South Asia are being pushed to breaking point, and children are the ones most affected. This research will give communities the tools to document their own experiences and make the case for the support they need. We are proud to work alongside Family for Every Child to ensure that evidence on climate change and family separation reaches the people and systems that can act on it.”
