Our project entails knowledge exchange among Rachel Murphy of University of Oxford and her research about skipped generation households in China; the professional expertise and experience of Xiaoyan Huang, CEO of Le Qun Social Work Service Centre and Professor of Social Work at Nankai University in training village children’s directors across China; and the social activism of Li Mi, Founder of the Guiyu Academy, a grassroots NGO. Drawing on a prior collaborative intervention that co-produced a calendar for communicating children’s voices to adults, the team seeks to extend this work’s impact. We received feedback on the calendar from 30 custodial grandparents, 18 children, and 171 village children’s directors, and from experts in international agencies. Reflecting on the feedback, we have identified a need to translate the calendar content into a short video series format suitable for mass distribution in China’s Wechat ecosystem, and for producing accompanying training materials to assist social workers and teachers in using the videos to support custodial grandparents. The videos will provide an original resource targeted to the educational and cultural backgrounds of grandparents, and social workers who are mostly aged over 50 and female, addressing childrearing inequalities (SDG 10) and promoting gendered empowerment (SDG 5).
