The "Building a Europe for and with children - Towards a Strategy for 2009-2011" Conference in Stockholm will take place from 8 to 10 September. This conference is organised under the auspices of the Swedish Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
At this conference SOS Children's Villages will present the project "Listening to children" in the seminar on child participation and good practices and projects in this field.
As a part of the process to develop the 2009 - 2016 strategy of SOS Children's Villages, an initiative called "Baking our strategy" was launched to allow children and young people from 26 countries worldwide to express their dreams, hopes and fears about themselves, their families and their community. Six hundred children, who either live in an SOS Children's Village or are part of an SOS family strengthening programme, participated in this project. On the basis of children's input, 15 trends were identified and used as one source of information for the development of the new strategies and for the improvement of the work of the organisation. Two groups of children (one from Bosnia Herzegovina and one from Jordan) were subsequently further involved in actually designing and drafting the overall strategy of SOS Children's Villages for the years to come.
More information can be found on the official website of the conference.