After holding the first meetings to launch the Island Youth Council, the Cabildo of Lanzarote is preparing the first meetings to create the Advisory Body for Children.
Promoted by the Youth area of the Corporation, which is coordinated by the councillor Paula Corujo, this is a participatory body through which to listen to and address the concerns, demands and claims of the island's children.
The main objectives of this Body would be to promote the participation of children and for them to use it to express "their needs and interests to build their lives and a social environment more in line with their needs and concerns", as indicated in the project.
Similarly, this forum for children would seek to ensure that, through their creativity, girls and boys can carry out their own initiatives, proposing ideas in different areas of their interest and passing them on to public administrations. The ultimate goal is for children to participate directly and actively in their local community.
Children in 3rd grade of Primary Education
The project is initially aimed at children in 3rd grade of Primary Education from all schools on the island, although the Youth Department of the Cabildo does not rule out that, later on, it may be extended to other age groups.
The work to develop this participatory table will be carried out in coordination with schools and would work with girls and boys through activities and recreational, animation, expression, creativity, sociocultural, social and collective techniques. All activities would be focused on helping children create and energize the Advisory Body.
The start of the work coincides with the commemoration, this Friday, November 20, of Universal Children's Day, which the UN commemorates since 1959, when the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child was approved.
According to Paula Corujo, the creation of this Body "responds to the need to listen, first-hand, to the concerns of the children of the island. It would be about addressing the different social and relational realities of childhood and with childhood. Always from a human and creative perspective. The youngest are one of the most forgotten sectors of the population when it comes to asking where we want to go as a society. It is necessary to know what their needs are, as it is the only way to move towards their well-being", concluded the Councillor for Youth of the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
The creation of the Advisory Body for Children is part of the objectives of the Strategic Plan for Children, Adolescents and Youth (JAIPE 15/20) approved by the Plenary of the Cabildo of Lanzarote on June 6, 2014.
