We participate in order to change the system!
I recently attended the Bucharest EU Children’s Declaration Conference to present the opinion of the Bulgarian children, as well as to the good policies of the Children’s council - the only national governmental children’s council, working to help the chairperson of the State agency for child protection in Bulgaria. Children from countries all…, 1. Participation needs to start early, Firstly, the importance of implementing child participation in the earliest stages possible. It was suggested, for example, that children in kindergarten are able to choose their fruit on Fridays. As funny as it may sound, it is an amazing idea. This teaches building opinion and expecting an outcome. Obviously, with age responsibility and…, 2. We need structures and mechanisms for participation, There is a need for structures and mechanisms for child/youth participation. They are vital since we need a place to gather periodically and decide on future events, as well as to report all recent results. Furthermore, creating better communication between child/youth organizations making their work more effective, but also systematizing the…, 3. Participation needs to be funded, As a society, we often tend to compare the outcomes of adult versus children led initiatives regardless of the fact that the latter have substantially less budgeting. A recurring issue we have recognized is the lack of adequate funding according to the complexity of the financial plan that children can offer, which in turn provides poor results,…, 4. Feedback on outcomes and obstacles, We spoke with a lot of specialists, had an expert report on the declaration and a number of governmental representatives, and one of the consistent comments was that they too think there is a lack of feedback in the majority of initiatives. If there are outcomes – a report presented, if there was an obstacle, a debriefing is required to identify…, 5. Spread knowledge of child rights, And lastly, we need better, up-to-date advertising of children’s rights, good policies and participation opportunities. Utilizing social media and adapting normative documents to child-friendly language could be one way of informing a larger number of young people about important topics regarding them. These are only a few of the significant…
Bulgaria
