Our animation: Children can do a lot

For the last couple of years, the Rejuvenate programme has been hosting conversations for practitioners and researchers to reflect on child and youth rights and participation, alongside building a living archive of related projects and resources.

Our idea

Throughout this work, we have been suggesting that we need to transform the way we work with children and young people.

In our working paper, we propose a shift from UNCRC principles of ‘protection, provision, participation’ to ‘space, support, system change’.

This shift could mobilise us to truly understand and support children’s agency, and move us away from adult-led, top-down agendas.

We hope our new animation, created in collaboration with the Rights Studio, can get people talking about preconceived ideas about what children can and can’t do, when we offer them space, support and system change.

Watch the animation

Take a stand and share the message

We would be delighted for our animation to be adopted by other organisations and individuals working to make positive change happen in this field.

If you want to join us and make an individual or organisational statement on child and youth rights and participation, there are a few different ways you can get involved:

• Share the animation through your website, social media or newsletter. You can use the YouTube link, but we are also happy to share the original file with you if you would prefer that. We have stills from the animation that can be used as images, as well as the full animation in the correct dimensions for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Please don’t hesitate to send us an email on [email protected] to request the files you need.
• Share the animation on social media with your reflections. If you prefer to, you can re-share one of our posts linked below:
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
• Host an internal, or external, discussion in your organisation using the animation as a provocative idea. We have some suggested discussion questions below, but please feel free to adapt or add to these, based on your own needs and objectives:

1. Thinking about space – do we have spaces where children and young people can lead and participate? Where does the decision-making power lie? Are their ideas crowded out, or do they participate meaningfully?
2. Thinking about support – what can we do to support children and young people to lead and participate?
3. Thinking about system change – how do our systems keep children and young people as secondary? How can we change our systems to enable children and young people to lead and participate meaningfully?

We would love your feedback on how people respond to the animation. You can email us on [email protected] to tell us how you’ve used it in your work, or with any comments or feedback.