The National Youth Council, which will be established in the period 2023-2025 through the Voice Now project coordinated by Defence for Children Italy, is therefore proposed as a space and a process organised and protected by the National Ombusperson for Children so that boys and girls from different social and territorial realities can confront each other and freely express their point of view and their opinion in relation to issues that concern them in line with and in conformity with the names and principles of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and with particular reference to Article 12, which constitutes a fundamental cornerstone for understanding and implementing the CRC.
The CNRR will be composed through a request for expressions of interest channelled through the organisations, institutions and realities committed in Italy to facilitating processes of direct participation of minors that will make up the project network. It will progressively comprise a total staff of 50 girls and boys between the ages of 13 and 17 who will be called upon to discuss and express their opinions and orientations in relation to issues that they themselves have identified and/or that have been solicited by the AGIA.
The initiative envisages an initial consultation phase in the first few months with groups of boys and girls through a series of consultative workshops in different territories and social contexts so that the CNRR can be informed from the outset by the perspectives and orientations of peers.
Once composed, the CNRR will work through four-monthly cycles, each of which will include four meetings, three online and one in-person. For each cycle, 3 political, social and cultural topics of interest will be discussed and selected by the participants. Each topic envisages the formation of a Commission, which, in the four-monthly cycle, will have the opportunity to deepen (also with the collaboration of experts in the field), debate and reach a series of recommendations. The project envisages four thematic cycles that will result in a final CNRR report that will be disseminated nationally.
In addition to the internal consultative and collaborative work, a series of hearings and meetings with institutions and relevant actors are planned in connection with the topics selected by the CNRR. Appropriate information tools will be prepared on each topic, during each cycle, to empower the participants in their active function of analysis, exchange and opinion. The processes will take place in plenary, in working committees and will be accompanied by creative activities designed to make the ’work’ of the participants enjoyable, fruitful and age-appropriate. The initiative envisages a final national forum in 2025 for the public presentation of the final report, as a prelude to the establishment of the new body that will work in the following two years.
2023 - 2025
Based on the 2021-2023 planning and the objectives defined for the three-year period 2023-2025 by the Ombudsperson for Children (from now AGIA), the National Youth Council (from now CNRR) is an initiative aimed at fostering, in a structured and continuous manner, the consultation and direct participation of persons under the age of 18 to contribute to the democratic processes of reform and change in our country.
Project financed by the Ombudsperson for Children and Youth.
In order to ensure the process of development and progressive extension of the CNRR, as well as the connection and link with what has already been achieved over the years in the field of direct participation of boys and girls in Italy, the Voice Now project was conceived by Defence for Children Italia in consultation with relevant bodies and organisations that have already been active in the sector for several years, in particular Arciragazzi Nazionale, the Associazione Amici del Villaggio, the Italian Committee for Unicef Italia and Terres des Hommes italia. This core group of organisations constitutes the initiative’s steering committee, which will gradually foster the establishment of a national network of associations and institutions active in the sector, which will gradually come into direct and indirect contact with the work of the CNRR.
In order to guarantee a broader consultative context, the initiative also envisages online and face-to-face consultations, in addition to the 50 members of the CNRR, who will be able to transmit and communicate, in the course of the work, themes and recommendations that the CNRR may consider in the context of its work; the Voice Now network will thus be a context aimed at collecting and linking participatory experiences experimented and implemented by the adhering subjects (associations, bodies, institutions), in a logic of information exchange and connection.
