Recently, Ace Child Rights & Welfare Officer, Gudila Joachim had the fantastic opportunity to take part in CATS (Children as Actors for Transforming Society) an annual event in Coax, Switzerland. The event was well attended and represented with 315 participants, 26 delegations of children and 43 nationalities. This is the first time a member of the Ace Africa team has attended CATS, and Gudila’s first experience of Europe.

Opening session – children and adults worked together to organise a puzzle which turned out to be the conference banner.

There were several noteworthy and influential keynote speakers taking part in the 7-day workshop such as Kesz Valdez, who won the International Children’s Peace Prize three years ago for his work in the Cavite slums in the Philippines. Other keynote speakers included Kirsten Sandber, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Judith Diers, Childs Adolescents Development & Participation at Unicef; Julie War, strong advocate for children’s rights at the European Parliament; Nkem Orakwue, Founder/Co-ordinator of the Nigerian Children’s Parliament & Executive Director of TV programmes; and Dimitri Avramopoulos, European Commissioner responsible to EAC for migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship.

Gudila Joachim at a partnership session.

Alongside keynote speakers, participants were able to explore how partnership and collaboration between children, young people and adults are crucial to enabling children’s participation in society. The majority of the discussions took part in groups of 20, allowing all delegates a chance to debate ideas as well as to increase their understanding of building intergenerational partnerships.

‘Working Together’ sessions

Human Library was a key activity at the event where participants had the opportunity to become ‘human books’ and share their stories from their countries on child participation. Other interactive activities included, role-plays, presentations and workshops. Workshops focused on equipping participants of all ages with new skills and competencies in order to enable them to work more effectively towards realising children’s rights to participate. Delegates were also given the opportunity to feed into a UN document, the General Comment on Adolescents, commissioned by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Gudila with participants following a story during ‘human library’.

 Overall the event was hugely successful and extremely informative. The intergenerational setting was of huge value to Gudila as this forms a central part of Ace Child-to-Child programmes. Gudila has now been able to take back with her a wealth of knowledge and experience, which she can now share with other Ace Child Rights Officers across the 5 project sites and beyond.

Gudila with members of the East Africa Delegation

A quote from Gudila’s experience:

“ I really appreciated getting the opportunity to be one of the participants, as I learnt a lot of new ideas and heard from different experiences from across the world. One women researcher from Uganda, who works at a Child Health and Development Centre, was a promoter of girl’s hygiene and reproductive health; they make reusable sanitary towels which have been effective in their country and which could be useful for Ace.”

Ugandan researcher from the Child Health and Development Centre explains the concept and use of reusable sanitary towels.

Gudila Joachim