About the Project
WHAT IS DRIVING THE NEED FOR THE PROJECT?
Local governments provide an array of programs, services, and amenities to children and their families, and thus have an essential role in ensuring favourable conditions for the promotion, realisation and protection of children’s rights. However, they lack key strategic documents for furthering children’s rights, designed based on children’s unique needs, perspectives and expectations.
Children are often absent from public discourse, and lack of concrete opportunities to actually engage with adult decision-makers. This is considered to perpetuate a popular negative stereotype of children as passive beneficiaries rather than active citizens.
Local governments need to do more to integrate the needs of this often invisible but important group into decision-making, and ensure that the city, town or community under their jurisdiction is an environment that stimulates the development of children and creates conditions for their active participation in the life and work of the local community.
Fostering children’s participation in local planning requires the development of an enabling environment, inter alia through promoting awareness on the right of the child to be heard from the youngest age, extensive capacity-building opportunities for professionals working with children, establishing participation structures and building strategic partnerships with a range of local stakeholders.
WHAT WILL THE PROJECT ACHIEVE?
Place to Grow aims to strengthen local governments’ efforts in advancing children’s human rights and children’s participation in local planning.
More specifically, the project will contribute to:
enhancing the capacities of local governments’ representatives in children’s rights, children’s participation and comprehensive local planning for children
strengthening the knowledge and skills of early childhood education and care and school staff in planning and conducting consultations with children on issues of local importance
supporting local governments in developing and operationalizing local strategies for children’s rights through participative processes, based on the best practices in the EU
introducing tools for effective children’s rights monitoring on local level
raising awareness on children’s rights and the importance of local planning for advancing the state of children’s rights
WHO WILL BE INVOLVED?
The project’s activities will be implemented across the municipalities of Vinica, Debar, Gostivar, Veles and Kisela Voda, while the engagement of the Association of municipalities (ZELS) will foster further dissemination and replication of the resources developed and the good practices established.
The main target groups include:
Local governments’ representatives
Educational staff and leaders of early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings, primary and secondary schools
Children aged 3-18 years old
Other key stakeholders (civil society organizations working on children’s rights, children’s human rights defenders, academic institutions, researchers, groups of professionals working with children, parents’ organizations, the private sector and media)