1. I’ve supported children’s active and meaningful participation in my community by first recalibrating my listening to active, engaged listening. This is step one of proper child participation in any project. The main challenge I’ve encountered so far was talking to other adult leaders into changing their ways of thinking, either when it comes to adult-child dynamics, children as decision makers etc.
2. I would like to enhance the long-term sustainability of our collaborative work with children, often times children participate in one off projects due to time constraints, I wish to change that.
3. Simply shifting peoples’ mindsets from tokenism (which is the norm, unfortunately), do meaningful participation
4. It is important due to the simple fact that children are entitled to more than a seat at the table, we owe it to children to show them that their VOICE matters, and isn’t taken for granted.