6th Children and Youth Conference - three days for the first time
Mayor Barbara Ludwig welcomes pupils to the opening on Tuesday, 6 November, 3 pm, in the City Council Chamber
At the opening of this year's conference, Mayor Barbara Ludwig will welcome pupils from the city's 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades.
The initiator of this year's conference is once again the City of Chemnitz's Children's Commissioner: Karin Genkel launched the 1st Children's Conference in 2007. According to Karin Genkel, the aim of the event, which was continued for the first time in 2012 as a children's and youth conference, is to provide a more age-appropriate and thus more target group-orientated platform for discussion, exchange and encounters within the respective age groups. The children's representative has once again found good partners for this ambitious project in the form of the district student council and the UNICEF university group at Chemnitz University of Technology. According to Karin Genkel, the Health Department and the Office for Youth and Family are once again providing reliable support in the preparation and realisation of the project. All 40 Chemnitz primary schools, twelve secondary schools and seven grammar schools as well as the Chemnitz School Model and the Special Education Centre for the Physically Disabled have been invited to take part in the 6th Children and Youth Conference. The workshops on the three days of the conference will be led by pupils and students from Chemnitz University of Technology.
Karin Genkel: "With our 6th Children and Youth Conference, which is being organised in three stages for the first time this year, we would like to offer girls and boys of different age groups a separate, and therefore certainly more intensive, form for joint meetings and consultations. We are looking forward to the response and cordially invite representatives of the media to accompany the three conference afternoons in the town hall."
At the 6th Children and Youth Conference, the stakeholders will discuss various topics relating to children's rights with the young participants and, at the end of the conference, hand over a statement jointly formulated by the participants with the wishes of the young politicians to the city administration. The conference will kick off on 6 November with pupils from years 8 to 12 discussing these key topics in groups: Why do we need school social workers? - What about our routes to school? - What do we need for targeted career guidance? On the following Tuesday (16 November), girls and boys from Years 5, 6 and 7 will discuss their rights to education and co-determination, participation in leisure and cultural life and the right to health. The groups of pupils from Years 3 and 4 will finally meet on the third day of the conference (20 November) in Chemnitz Town Hall: they will talk about their rights as children - such as the right to equality and education, health, play and leisure, non-violent upbringing and the right to support for people with disabilities.
Background: Since 1989, 20 November has been marked in the calendar as International Children's Rights Day or World Children's Day. Our 1st Children's Conference in Chemnitz is therefore also intended to use this day to inform children about their rights and to awaken their interest in politics. We want to involve those responsible in administration and politics in the discussion with children and draw their attention to what is needed to better realise children's rights in Chemnitz.
Contact: Karin Genkel, Children's Representative of the City of Chemnitz, phone 0371 9095059, e-mail: kinderbeauftragte@stadt-chemnitz.de