DEMOCRACY AND MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

Our groups and activities are not just delivered for children and young people but with and by children and young people. We promote peer education and that everyone has something of value to share with others. Within socialist education, children and young people are active players in their educational processes where they can practise collective self-organisation. Group sessions, preparation of activities and campaigns are planned with meaningful input from our children and young people.

In our work we practise what we think is a real, a socialist democracy. Everybody should have the possibility to participate in decisions on matters that concern them, no matter if they are the youngest group member or adults. We consider the needs and interests of minorities in the process of decision making. When a decision has been made everyone is responsible for its implementation.

Adults call themselves “helpers” rather than “group leaders” because we do not claim to be the big bosses who set the rules. We consider ourselves members of the group with more experience in life, whose task is to help the group on the way towards self-organisation. As an ideal, we aim at making ourselves obsolete. The advantage of being more experienced doesn’t mean that our opinions in discussion count more than those of others. After all, there may always be topics on which children are the experts, so that the adults can learn from them.

A useful exercise for your organisation is to go through the following ‘pathway to participation’, and check if you are actually ready for child participation. It follows the levels of Roger Hart’s ladder of participation, but focuses on organisational readiness and commitment. Readiness is related to the motivation for participation, and commitment is further explored in the following section on opportunities for participation when talking about power.

OBJECTIVES:

To reflect on what participants’ organisations are already doing to encourage participation and on how participants’ organisations could take further measures to improve participation and decision-making procedures

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Together or in small groups, go through the questions of Shier’s pathway to participation. For each question, the participants should think of concrete examples and write them in a footprint (drawn on paper), in one colour. You can encourage them by going through the different activities you have done during the year, or through all the aspects of one specific activity.

2. When you come to questions where you can’t find an example, you should put an empty footstep in a second colour on the path on the floor. Once you have gone through the whole pathway, try to find ideas for the steps that are symbolised by the empty footsteps. Cooperatively identify and decide on which steps you would like to act upon, come up with concrete ideas to move forward and write these on the footprint outlines in a second colour.

Debriefing

How was the activity?

Did you learn anything new about your group or organisation?

What did we identify that we are good at when it comes to encouraging child participation?

What did we identify that we can improve upon to encourage child participation?

Why is child participation important?

How can we measure whether we are improving? Will there be concrete results?

What challenges might arise?