A practical initiative that enables children and young people to help shape a City Farms future

A process for City Farms to improve the quality of service provision to children and families and which, at the same time, helps to implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, by enabling children’s views to be taken into account in decisions that directly affect them.

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out every child’s right to participate fully in leisure, recreation, cultural life and the arts. This paper attempts to provide practical ways to underpin principles of the UN Convention, in particular Article 12.1, which states:

"Every child who is capable of forming his or her own views has the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."

The process encourages City Farms to become even more child-friendly
City Farms, by applying the rights set out in Article 31, can develop a successful involvement approach. The best experts on child-friendly provision are children themselves. Children should be given the opportunity to be fully consulted and involved in the life of the City Farm and in improving its services and provision.

Children and young people undertake the work voluntarily, in their own time, with the City Farm working with them as citizens in their own right, without the constraints of an imposed agenda. The City Farm needs to ensure a positive action approach to include those in the local community that for a variety of reasons may be excluded, that minority ethnic communities and children with disabilities, for example, are invited to participate in every team. The children and young peoples’ teams are facilitated and undertake training and preparation for the job, and produce a report at the end of every project.

Suggested steps:

1. Team building and learning about Article 31 and their job.
2. Reflecting on previous experiences.
3. Identifying key issues and questions the children and young people want to find out about.
4. Investigating existing programmes and facilities.
5. Evaluating the programmes and facilities visited.
6. Identifying recommendations for the future.
7. Reporting directly to the City Farm management.

Through this process the children and young people are able to express their authentic perceptions of a City Farm’s services and programmes, from their own unique perspective.

Benefits to children in general

• Influencing service providers in becoming better able to serve the needs and respond to the interests of children, creating a more child-friendly environment in the local community.
• To help influence the climate of opinion in favour of listening to, and taking account of children’s views, in keeping with the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• To enhance the status of children in society, and strengthen their position as citizens.

Benefits to children and young people who participate in the programme

• Taking part in a children’s project offers a wide range of learning opportunities, including communication, listening, negotiation, evaluation, literacy, culture and insight into the management and organisation of community land based projects
• This process encourages children to develop empathy and consideration for the needs of others. Alongside their own needs they consider the needs of children who are different from themselves, such as younger children, or disabled children.
• Being listened to, and having their views taken seriously by adults in positions of authority, encourages in children a sense of responsibility. The respect that is shown to children helps them learn to respect others.
• Inviting children to take on this job builds their confidence and self-esteem.

Benefits for the City Farm

• City Farms can make changes to better meet the needs of their users, and improve the quality of their services.
• City Farms will be able to attract more children and young people to the Farm and to get involved.
• City Farms seek to serve the whole community on an equal basis. This approach will help them achieve this.
• Changes that make services more child-friendly also help make them more accessible for parents and carers. Therefore it can help the City Farm to be able to attract whole families to use their services and possibly attract adult volunteers.
• This approach helps challenge any negative attitudes of staff and volunteers towards children and young people.
• A children’s and young peoples’ project can help to create a new climate of openness to children’s views, which will benefit the City Farm for years to come.

Some guidance notes

Good facilitation: Is a key aspect of the process, and a successful project often relies on having sufficient and well co-ordinated facilitation. Facilitators must be on "tap" not on "top".

Preparation and information: Induction sessions and fact-finding visits to other projects tends to give the team enough information and knowledge to feel capable and in control.

Activities: Meetings and activities need to be as varied and as much fun as possible. Meeting new people and doing things that they or other people aren’t normally allowed to do figures highly as exciting and enjoyable aspects of the job.

Other children: Meeting other children and young people is usually a significant motivation.

"Live" presentation of recommendations: The opportunity to present their findings to an audience gives the team a chance to directly discuss their recommendations with decision-makers.

Effective consultation and involvement: An obvious outcome of the programme is that it provides extremely effective ways of seeking children’s views on facilities, services and policy.

Budget: Raise money to fully finance this process

Budget: Give the team a budget to manage, to pay for their out of pocket expenses, travel etc.

Team age groups: let the teams make their own judgements, many similar projects tend to have overlapping age group teams eg 7s - 12s and 12s - 16s

Induction activities: should be long enough for children and young people to get to know each other, and to do some different and interesting activities.

Visits: wherever possible have fact-finding visits to projects that are similar or have aspects that are similar to the City Farm.

Young people: should, where possible, be recruited to assist with the facilitation.

"Reports" : The team needs to choose the way they present a final report, eg written, video, wall newspaper, photographic exhibition etc.

Personal development: Children and young people tend to improve their confidence, self-worth, analytical skills and the ability to express, present and defend their views during the process.

Relationships: Through the process relationships are often formed that can transcend age, social background or culture.

Social inclusion: need to continually check who is involved, and question whether particular groups are being excluded. There is a danger that children and young people who are involved in City Farm are perceived and treated as the voice of all children and young people.

Listening workshops: a way of helping adults to learn to listen better to children and young people

Continuing consultation: having established a process through which children’s and young peoples’ views can be effectively sought, continue the process on a long-term or permanent basis.

This paper is a contribution to "the EFCF Sustainable Development series" EFCF Board, revised 2003