CHILD AND YOUTH PARTICIPATION

Participation is a fundamental right established in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. When children and young people have an active voice, they can shape their own future as well as the future of the communities they live in.

Listening to children and young people

Children and young people are the experts in their own lives. We are committed to providing spaces for their full meaningful participation in all matters that concern them: in their everyday lives, in the programmes that are designed to support them and their peers, and in improving policy and practice.

Youth participation in action

The “Together” project aims to contribute to better embedding children’s rights in the responses to crisis situations across the EU, by empowering children and young people living in vulnerable family situations and in alternative care to participate meaningfully in decisions and solutions at local, regional and national level on all matters affecting them. Find out more about this EU-funded project here. 

 

In June 2017, SOS Children’s Villages Chile and other partner NGOs organised a youth forum at the Chilean Congress; over 100 young people were considered as youth ambassador. A young man named Franco was selected to represent Chilean young people at a high-level political forum at the UN in New York.


In his intervention, Franco appealed for development and social policies to take into consideration the needs and aspirations of young people, with a focus on equal opportunities for all to help break the cycle of poverty and exclusion so that future generations can be active and equal participants in society.
 
He stressed the need for there to be greater awareness of the plight faced by those growing up with foster parents or in alternative care units, having been separated from their families.
 
“Parents need to be given support so that they can support their children and prevent suffering and separation. It is cyclical. If the parents suffer, the children suffer too. If we resolve this problem we can resolve it for future generations.”
 
 

During the recent strategy development process, SOS Children’s Villages set up a youth coalition to ensure young people were involved in defining the organisation's strategy, which will guide our work throughout the next decade.

Participants from ten countries – Albania, Cambodia, Estonia, Finland, India, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru and Rwanda – held workshops with their peers to ensure their voices were heard during the strategy development process.

As a result, our Strategy 2030 encompasses their needs and perspectives, helping us give all young people in SOS Children’s Villages’ programmes a strong foundation for a successful, independent life.

SOS Children’s Villages Italy has given young people a platform to be agents of change and actors in the development of quality alternative care trainings for care professionals.

Part of this project included consulting young people to develop a special module which they themselves could deliver to care professionals. This module, which has received positive feedback from training participants, was created by and for young people and sought to highlight the importance of children’s rights for care professionals from their perspective and in their language.