Plan of child participation. Guidecreated by children. IMCITIZEN

Abstract

Dear reader, what follows is a small guide that aims to provide you with tools to use to teach other children about children’s rights and how to organise yourselves to participate actively in the public life of your town or city. This material arises as part of a long process carried out by children between 10 and 12 years of age from eleven schools in six autonomous communities in Spain, who were experimenting with interesting and effective ways of raising awareness of children’s rights among their schoolmates, who were themselves co-designers of the tools as well as protagonists of the experiences presented here. A total of 140 children were involved in education campaigns in their schools. We hope that they will be useful for you to be able to start and lead participation processes together with other boys and girls. All this work is part of a pioneering project in Europe, which aims to expand the possibilities for children to know their rights well, to be their own advocates and disseminators, to participate in the decision- making processes of public life in the places where they live (at local, regional, national and European level) and to design and lead participatory processes. The project we are talking about is called IMCITIZEN (“I AM A CITIZEN”).