Abstract
Municipalities must take steps towards an “educational action” that welcomes children into environments that estimulate their involvement and participation in issues that mean something to them. Professionals working directly with children in the municipal sphere must strengthen the development of their active and committed citizenship (SDG no. 4), relating to them as citizens capable of transforming their environment. Children’s participation requires adults who recognise them as interlocutors and establish relationships of trust and mutual respect with them. Municipalities need to create opportunities for children to be included in the co‐production of local projects and to take a leading role in public policies. This article aims to offer elements that can nurture professionals’ readiness and “capacity building” to facilitate children’s participation. These elements are formed in the context of a pedagogical practice (the “coffee meetings”) and emerge through a systematisation of experiences (Aguiar, 2013; Barnechea & Morgan, 2010; Jara, 2012, 2018; Mera, 2019). Coordinated by an inter‐university team, the reflective exchange promoted by the meetings between municipal technical professionals and elected representatives generates knowledge, ideas, and changes in participants’ approaches to children’s participation in municipalities’ decision‐making processes; content analysis, development, and evaluation of the meetings by participants provide insight into the value of a learning community established as a tool to innovate child participation, build professional capacity towards this goal, and strengthen the work of local administrations in the field of citizenship.
Highlights
The complexity of local social realities emphasises the need for putting arguments and political programmes into action
The data included in this article come from an experi‐ ence that arose at the beginning of the pandemic in the framework of the research project Childhood and Participation: Diagnosis and Proposals for Active and Inclusive Citizenship in the Community, Institutions, and Governance. This project aims to determine the state of child participation in Spain and to approach the com‐ ponents that make the inclusion of children in citizen participation possible through a participatory diagnosis
The opinions and evaluations offered by the participants at different times are taken into consid‐ eration. This evolution is accompanied by many uncer‐ tainties and questions that define each encounter and course of action: What can we offer? What issues are you interested in addressing? What do they need ? For how long and how often? Who will organise and energise them? How will attendees be allowed to intervene? How will the sessions be run? How to share the knowledge generated? How to present the topics? Questions stemmed from the desire to generate a useful space for those professionals who work daily with and for childhood participation
Summary
The complexity of local social realities emphasises the need for putting arguments and political programmes into action. In most municipali‐ ties, this fact has changed the role of the local author‐ ities on behalf of a better development of people and Social Inclusion, 2022, Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages X–X communities by becoming a relational administration. These administrations focus on the reduction of the con‐ ditions of vulnerability and the improvement of the liv‐ ing conditions of all citizens. The 2030 agenda for sus‐ tainable development, approved by the UN in 2015, offers local administrations a framework to combat and reduce poverty, reduce inequalities, protect the planet, and improve people’s living conditions This article aims to strengthen the role of children as active citizens who participate in municipal decision‐making
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