I educate
Educo is an NGO, a member of ChildFund Alliance, one of the leading international coalitions of NGOs focused on child protection, working in more than 18 countries and for over 30 years for the well-being and rights of children, especially the right to receive a quality education. Within its project Activate listening, Educo has carried out multiple projects funded by the Ministry related to promoting child and adolescent participation. Among them are:
Project From Audience to Influence
The projectFrom Listening to Influence, a Necessary Step to Make the Participation of Boys and Girls Effective in the Defense of Their Rights, within which it was carried out:
Project Why don’t we do something together?
The project And why don't we do something together? where girls and boys, accompanied by their teachers and Educo's technical team, have created a board game that places active listening at the center of the debate as a right and a tool for social transformation, such as their school and family environment, with them being the ones to tell it.
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe, in addition to offering different guides and manuals on child and adolescent participation, has a web in English with videos and with material to download about participation.
IMCITIZEN
IMCITIZEN brings together different socio-educational agents with experience in the participation of children and adolescents in school and at the local and regional levels in Spain. It is made up of 10 children's platforms that have been established to promote children's rights, create children's participation platforms, and advance strategies to increase decision-making by girls and boys. The IMCITIZEN project, funded by the EU's CERV-2022-CHILD program, promotes the democratic citizenship identity of girls and boys as active and committed members.
In hiswebit is, among multiple resources, the bookWE PARTICIPATE, we take action!result of the collective work with girls and boys from various schools who have participated in the co-design of Child Participation Platforms as active and committed citizens. It contains practical tools to facilitate this process, with resources explained by the protagonists themselves.
There is also theChildhood Citizen Participation Plan. Guide created by girls and boysThis guide offers concrete strategies and actions to strengthen the participation of girls and boys in decision-making in their municipalities. The Strategic Plan has been designed by the participation Platforms of each municipality, with the support, in some cases, of the municipal councils. Additionally, it includes ten strategies agreed upon by representatives of the 10 IMCITIZEN participation Platforms. The guide is the result of the work of 140 boys and girls, who have been the protagonists of this process.
Additionally, they have created two posters, one to defend the keys to dialogue between girls, boys, and adults, with the fundamental keys to guarantee fair and equitable dialogues in spaces for children's participation, and another explaining 10 strategies to participate more and better in municipalities. These are strategies developed by the girls and boys from the platforms that will promote spaces where children are active participants in decision-making.
SOS Children's Villages
NGO SOS Children's Villages International has carried out the TOGETHER project, co-financed by the European Union, which is being implemented in Spain (Community of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha), Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy.
This project strengthens the participation of children and youth in public decision-making by training children and young people in vulnerable situations to make recommendations that ensure their needs and concerns are taken into account in the decision-making processes of the European Union and Spain. Through this project, awareness-raising and training actions are carried out aimed at professionals working for children and the authorities responsible for policies and laws affecting child protection.
European Commission
In 2020, the European Commission commissioned a study on children's participation in the political and democratic life of the EU. The report covers 27 Member States and the United Kingdom, analyzing children's participation at the national level. In 10 countries, the researchers also analyzed local participation. The report also includes 12 case studies. More than 200 children and young people shared their opinions and experiences in interviews and organized discussion groups.
Child-Friendly Cities (CFC)
For Child Friendly Cities Participation is one of its fundamental pillars. It is a right of children and adolescents that has an impact not only on themselves, in their development as individuals, but also on the entire community where they live. For participation to be real, permanent structures must be established where their opinions are taken into account in the environments around them.
Through the Child-Friendly Cities initiative, processes of child and adolescent participation are promoted at the local, regional, and national levels, so that the opinions and proposals of boys and girls are channeled into specific aspects related to public policies focused on childhood.
Child-Friendly Cities offers various resources that address the benefits of promoting child and adolescent participation, present some key aspects for promoting child and adolescent participation spaces, and provide recommendations on their operation.
UNICEF
In Spain, UNICEF works to promote and defend the rights of children, collaborating with governments and civil society to influence public policies that combat child poverty, inequality, and ensure the health, education, nutrition, and protection of boys, girls, and adolescents, while also carrying out awareness and rights education campaigns.
Childhood Platform
The Childhood Platform is an alliance of non-profit organizations that work to achieve the full compliance with the rights of boys, girls, and adolescents. Its mission is to unite the efforts of organizations operating at the national level that work in the field of childhood and to create a coordination space that defends, promotes, and protects the rights of boys, girls, and adolescents in Spain in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Childhood Platform proposes the creation of a collaborative document with periodic review, for the construction of common guidelines on “what we understand by participation.” Child participation, both as a goal and as a methodology, as well as the way to talk about it, measure it, and work on it.
Moreover, it has gathered in a document the conclusions of more than 2,700 girls and boys from all over Spain about the right to child and adolescent participation, understood as a way of acting to promote change, transform reality, take part in and intervene in the environment, and thus influence it and contribute to social change.
Model by Laura Lundy
Laura Lundy is, among other things, co-director of the Centre for Children’s Rights and chief co-editor of the International Journal of Children’s Rights. Her work focuses on children’s rights, with special attention to the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in legislation and policies, educational rights, and children’s right to participate in decision-making. Her model offers a guide to conceptualizing Article 12 of the Convention and focuses on four distinct but interrelated elements, which follow a logical chronological order.
Ede Foundation
It is a group of social organizations that work to generate lasting, inclusive, and sustainable changes through knowledge, direct intervention, and the development of social economy and inclusive employment projects. They have created the following guide for all people who accompany girls, boys, and adolescents and wish to work on participation. The guide aims to be a document that provides guidance, tools, and resources to work on participation from a rights-based approach. It is intended for agents in both the formal educational field and the non-formal or informal sectors. This is an intervention proposal with dynamics and tools that facilitate reflection and the acquisition of skills, organized by age and designed in an agile manner.
Los Glayus Association
It is an entity dedicated to work in education during leisure time. Since 2005, it has worked closely with the Childhood Observatory of the Principality of Asturias and Unicef in promoting and disseminating children's rights, encouraging and energizing children's participation councils throughout the Asturian region. This document gathers much of its reflections on this topic and provides activities, strategies, and above all good ideas to work on and understand something as important as children's participation.
