ENYA 2019 “Let’s Talk Young, Let’s Talk About Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment!”

The ENYA 2019 "Let's Talk Young, Let's Talk About Children's Rights in the Digital Environment!" child participation project aims at allowing children and young people to look at the challenges and advantages of the digital environment, and how they are addressed in the different countries.

Young people from 18 countries/regions (Albania, Andalusia, Basque country, Belgium FR, Belgium FL, Catalonia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Georgia, Iceland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Northern Ireland, Poland, Scotland, Wales) took part in the project. Participating ENOC member institutions used different methodologies to recruit and involve young people and explored different child participation tools and methods to collect and reflect young people’s views and opinions. Between February and June 2019, ENYA country teams conducted several physical meetings or other activities with young people to explore the annual theme and collect their recommendations on children’s rights in the digital environment, using different formats: group discussions with relevant experts in the field, meeting with social media companies, arts and videos, writing of reports, setting up different plays and stories, interviews, etc.

At the final stage of country activities, two elected young representatives per country/region, accompanied by ENYA Coordinators, participated in the ENYA Forum on 25-26 June 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. 37 young people, 18 ENYA Coordinators, the ENOC Secretariat and several Ombudspersons, and Commissioners for Children met over the two days event. Country/region teams had the opportunity to present the outcome of their activities, and discussed various issues related to children’s rights in the digital environment, among others education, digital literacy, online safety, privacy, fake news, participation, mental health, etc. They also participated in creative workshops and recorded a video about their hopes and fears in the digital world. During the second day of the event, children and young people worked and agreed on a set of common recommendations on the main theme. At the final evaluation session, young people expressed views on what participating in this project has brought to them as an experience and what they would like to change in order to improve the process for next year's participants.

One young participant per country/region (who participated in the Brussels Forum) attended the ENOC 23rd Annual Conference on Children’s rights in the digital environment taking place in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 25-27 September 2019, where they presented their common recommendations and the outcomes of ENYA 2019 annual activities. Conference participants had the opportunity to interact with the ENYA group, and to learn more about their findings on the Conference theme. The ENYA recommendations are also reflected in the ENOC position statement on children’s rights in the digital environment and promoted as a separate deliverable.

ENYA 2019 video "Let's Talk Young, Let's Talk About Children's Rights in the Digital Environment"

ENYA Forum, June 2019, Brussels

ENYA at ENOC Annual Conference, September 2019, Belfast