Eurochild Children's Council Meets in Brussels

The Eurochild Children's Council met this week at the Eurochild office in Brussels to ensure that Eurochild embeds meaningful child participation into all of its work.

This week (7th-8th October), the Eurochild Children’s Council met at the Eurochild Office in Brussels to work on developing the Network’s second Child Participation Strategy and to start planning the next Eurochild conference.

Eurochild’s Child Participation Strategy aims at ensuring that Eurochild embeds meaningful child participation in all of its work to the highest standards. During the meeting, the children worked in collaboration with the child participation reference group (including former members of the previous children’s council) and Eurochild staff to see how to build on the first strategy and strengthen child participation at Eurochild. Following extensive consultation with the Children’s council (former and current) and members of Eurochild that ensure child participation is implemented, the new child participation strategy will be adopted at the Eurochild General Assembly in April 2020.  On the second day of meetings, the Children’s Council and child participation reference group was also joined by a Finnish children’s delegation, to kick of preparations for the next Eurochild Conference that will be held in Hämeenlinna, Finland, in 2020.  Going forward, this group will play a fundamental role in the design and implementation of the conference.

The Children’s Council’s members are aged 11-16 years and represent 12 European countries. They work towards mainstreaming children’s voices and ensure that Eurochild directly includes children in their advocacy, governance, events and strategy planning. They support the Eurochild network in its aims to constantly improve its child participation practices. 

At the meetings, the children also discussed the upcoming activities for the Children’s Council, and continued developing a plan for their participation in the30th anniversary of the UNCRC event to be held at the European Parliament in November. The Eurochild children’s council is bringing children’s perspectives to governance structures of the Eurochild network – representatives will join the next management board and faciilitate training for Eurochild’s staff.

Explore the event photos here, and read more about Eurochild's first Child Participation Strategy here.