Overview

Every day, in many countries around the world, children are born without a national identity. Sons and daughters of refugees fleeing conflict or persecution across borders, or children of migrant workers looking for opportunities in other countries, they grow up without being recognized or included by the governments of the countries they call home. As they grow up, these “stateless” children are denied access to the most basic human rights - education, healthcare, movement, and, eventually, employment. They are left especially vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and trafficking simply because they have no official documents to prove who they are and no country counts them as their citizens.

The Challenge

Knowing Children, a Thai non-governmental organization, works to support the provision of basic human rights for all children, including the right to an identity. They envisioned a tool that would empower stateless children to document their own existence. “This Is Who I Am” became the name for a personal identity book that each child could use to gather all the information that they have on themselves and their families.

The Solution

With our longstanding relationship, built on the initial branding of the organization and development of their collateral, Keen was Knowing Children’s choice to actualize their vision for “This Is Who I Am”. Combining the official feel of a government-issued identity document with the freedom of a scrapbook format, Keen’s print design team developed a simple, clear design and layout, with a cover that would be personalized with a self-affixed photo and signature, and inside page templates and pockets for accommodating many different aspects of the children’s lives such as birth, medical and school records, and hand-written biographies and personal references. The Keen production department was then brought on board to formulate the “packaging” of the document, with the twin goals of achieving durability and cost-effectiveness for reproduction on a large scale in resource-limited environments.

The pilot project has been developed for stateless children in refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border and all information is in three languages (English, Thai and Karen). To date, 500 “This is Who I Am” books have been prepared, along with training on how to use the books, while steps are being taken to expand the distribution in northern Thailand and worldwide, with translations in local languages. World Vision and other organizations and individuals are working with Knowing Children to further develop and fund this project.