The Eurochild Children’s Council meet with the European Commission to present their campaign on the EU Child Guarantee

The Eurochild Children’s Council met in Brussels to discuss and support Eurochild’s work and test-run a workshop they created with representatives of the European Commission on child participation and the Child Guarantee to make sure that children’s voices are heard in decisions at EU and national level.

In November, we had the pleasure of welcoming the Eurochild Children’s Council (ECC) in Brussels for the second time in 2023. During their four-day meeting, the ECC members came together again with the Eurochild Secretariat and participated in a number of workshops and activities aiming to inform Eurochild’s policy, advocacy and project work. These included a crash course on how Eurochild does social media and campaigning, a session on how the ECC can be further involved in present and future projects Eurochild is undertaking and finally talking about digital literacy and children’s safety online by… playing a video game!

On 20 November, World Children’s Day, ECC members facilitated a workshop with representatives from the European Commission. Coordinator on the Rights of the Child, Marie-Cécile Rouillon, and Olga Jablonowska and Stefan Iszkowski from the office of the Director for Social Rights and Inclusion at DG EMPL participated in an interactive ‘skeleton’ workshop on how to effectively and meaningfully involve children in decision-making, specifically within the context of the Child Guarantee. The European Commission representatives took part in a number of activities and expressed their support for the work and commitment of the ECC, stating that "this is what World Children’s Day is all about".

The ECC will now take this workshop back to their home countries and work together with their supporting organisations to ensure that child participation is integrated in the implementation of the Child Guarantee at national level.

Finally, yet importantly, the ECC began creating a child-friendly version of Eurochild’s soon-to-be updated Child Protection Policy, at the Brussels Comic Arts Museum! The children worked together with the illustrator Alex Hughes, from Drawnalism, to create a document aiming to ensure the Protection Policy’s accessibility to all children and continue maintaining Eurochild’s high child safeguarding standards.

Look at the photos