Children’s Participation

In 1979 the US section of the International Playground Association (IPA, now renamed the International Association for the Child’s Right to Play) recommended that their contribution to the International Year of the Child would be to further the status of young people’s participation in environmental projects. Together with Robin Moore and a small team of graduate students and teenagers, I mounted an international survey on the subject and three special issues of the Childhood City Newsletter were published. Regrettably, we received very little information on the many good examples of children’s participation from the developing nations. But UNICEF, with its long term commitment to adult community participation has corrected the problem by commissioning this Essay.