Management and Governance Accountability to Children: Participation and Representation in Organisational Decision Making

Children’s participation and accountability to children are increasingly common aspirations of childfocused organisations; development agencies and research institutions frequently use young people’s advisory councils as one path to participation. A key challenge is to not only find meaningful ways to institutionalise children’s views as part of organisational decision making, but also to identify and address barriers to participation. This article presents the findings of a commissioned landscape assessment to identify good practices and lessons learned from child-focused agencies, in order to inform the operationalisation of children’s requests on programme improvements and accountability to children. The study was exploratory and qualitative. It included primary and secondary data collection, including a desk review, key informant interviews with adults and young people, and focus group discussions with young people. The findings showed common elements of organisational models of child participation and insights from children and young people on the types of decisions they want to influence, reasons why they should be heard, and how-to approaches to support their meaningful participation. Other findings focused on key challenges of children’s participation in governance, including adult mindsets, low capacity, and structural restrictions, and lessons learned on enabling factors, such as organisation-wide buy-in, and space and inclusion for children and young people. Further inquiry could inform the purpose, Journal of Youth Development | http://jyd.pitt.edu/ | Vol. 16 Issue 2-3 DOI 10.5195/jyd.2021.1045 Management and Accountability to Children 198 scope, and appropriateness of child participation in governance structures within child-focused organisations.

scope, and appropriateness of child participation in governance structures within child-focused organisations.
Key words: child participation, accountability to children, inclusive governance, child participatory research Background Children's participation and accountability to children are increasingly common aspirations of child-focused organisations, though they remain largely elusive concepts. Participation can include information-sharing, dialogue, and process engagement, but can also risk challenges such as tokenism and selective inclusion (Tisdall, 2015). Despite good intentions, adults can inhibit child participation. Adult-created participatory processes can allow for participation in decision making, while still prohibiting the power to make real change. Charles & Haines (2019) found that young people engaged in participatory decision making felt their contributions remained largely unseen and unrecognised by adults (see also Lundy, 2007;Wyness, 2009). Lundy (2007) proposed a new model for conceptualising Article 12 of the UNCRC 1 which focuses on four elements of operationalising child participation: 1. Space: Children must be given the opportunity to express a view 2. Voice: Children must be facilitated to express their views 3. Audience: The view must be listened to 4. Influence: The view must be acted upon, as appropriate (p. 933).
"While Lundy's conceptualisation has been widely welcomed in research, policy and practice, there is a dearth of examples in the literature regarding how the concepts of space, voice, audience and influence can be operationalised" (Kennan et al., 2019, p. 205). Development agencies and research institutions increasingly use young people's advisory councils as one path 1 Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates: 1. States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
2. For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law.
(United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009, p. 3) to participation. Collins et al. (2020) found young people's advisory councils contribute an important element to research practice, and open dialogue with young people can support meaningful participation; on the other hand, they also found young people and adults often have differing expectations of advisory council roles.
A key challenge is not only to find meaningful ways to institutionalise children's views as part of organisational decision making, but also to identify and address barriers to participation and feedback to children on how their views are being considered and put into practice (Tisdall, 2015). In line with World Vision International's strategic direction for child participation, the organisation has piloted and strengthened a Children's Feedback Mechanism at national levels to enable children's views to influence programme improvements and enhanced accountability to children.
At higher levels, management supported children's representation in the Triennial Council, World Vision's highest governance body, which meets every 3 years and includes representatives from 53 national boards and advisory councils, global leaders, national directors, and the international board. In preparation for the November 2019 Triennial Council, children's representatives reviewed the recommendations from children in the previous Triennial Council and were given the opportunity to develop their own requests, which they presented to leadership: 1. Ensure that children's participation is central to World Vision's work.
2. Create more spaces for children to be listened to and consider the different perspectives they can offer.
3. Establish children's consultative councils at the national and global level to ensure they can provide views and opinions on issues relevant to them. 4. Promote more visits of World Vision leaders to communities to meet children and get their views directly.
Taken together, these requests provide an opportunity for World Vision to take the next steps in engaging and listening to children in ways that are meaningful to them and to the organisation.
The main purpose of this article is to present findings of the landscape assessment commissioned by World Vision management, identifying good practices and lessons learned both internally and from other child-focused agencies, in order to inform the operationalisation of children's requests on programme improvements and accountability to children. Using an adapted version of Lundy's participation framework, the landscape review is used to offer a meaningful alternative to a top-down institutional youth advisory council, providing recommendations that intentionally counter tokenism and promote useful and meaningful participation at all levels of organisational decision making. Other child-focused agencies that were consulted in the landscape assessment included Child Helpline International, Child Rights Connect, Plan International, Queen's University Belfast, Ryerson University Toronto, Save the Children UK, and terre des hommes Germany.

Methodology
To identify best practices on how to implement children's requests to strengthen children's decision making at program, management, and governance levels, World Vision International (WVI) conducted a landscape analysis on its own programming and other international childfocused agencies.
The study was exploratory and qualitative. Primary and secondary data collection was undertaken. A desk review of over 40 publications and organisational documents was followed by 26 key informant interviews (KIIs) with adults and young people and focus group discussions (FGDs) with 56 young people. Lundy's (2007) model for meaningful participation was adapted for this study to collect and analyse the data.
A total of 82 individuals participated. Perspectives were heard from young people (aged 10 to 17 years) and adults in six case study countries.
In KIIs and FGDs, purposeful sampling was used to identify and select study participants.
Specific variables were used to select participants, such as age, gender, and ethnicity, with targeted efforts to learn from young people, especially marginalised children, who have been actively engaged in existing WVI programmes and structures. Child participants included children with disabilities, children living with relatives, children from single-parent families, and children affected by conflict and insecurity.
KII participants consisted of adults and young people's representatives actively engaged in the programme's processes or structures, supporting children's participation in organisational decision making. Interviews were conducted by phone. FGDs with young people participating in WVI programmes as members of children's clubs, consultative committees, student parliaments, 201 and/or child youth movements were facilitated and documented by local staff. In three countries (Dominican Republic, Ghana, and Palestine), FGDs were conducted in person using visual, participatory tools. In Romania, the same interview tool was used in an online meeting format with members of WVI Romania Children's Consultative Committee residing in different regions of the country. years and under, consent was gained from their parent or guardian, and assent was gained from the child/young person.
All data was entered, processed, and thematically analysed using MS Excel and NVivo software.
Template analysis was applied to support systematic thematic analysis, while seeking to balance flexibility and structure (King & Brooks, 2017). Central to template analysis is the development of a coding template, which summarises themes identified by the researcher(s) as important in a data set, organising them in a meaningful manner. Drawing upon an adapted version of Lundy's (2007)

Key Findings
This section presents findings from the desk review, KIIs, and FGDs. The section is structured into the most prevalent and salient themes, reflecting findings across organisations and from the broader literature from the desk review. The four key thematic categories that arose included essential elements of child participation in governance of different organisational models, findings on challenges to children's participation in decision making and governance, lessons learned on enabling factors, and children's perspectives on decision making.

Key Elements of Organisational Models
Meaningful participation of children and young people in organisational decision making and governance requires organisational commitment and strategies supporting processes and platforms for children and young people to access information and express their views. In qualitative interviews, an international expert noted, "In my opinion, there is no right answer on how children can be involved in governance. It really depends on resources, context, and where staff are at. If an organisation is advanced with resources on child participation, then you have a head start." Based on triangulation of data from both the desk review and primary data collection among organisational representatives, the study revealed the following are often included in organizational models of children's participation: 1. structures for children and young people's participation in governance such as a child advisory committee; 2. capacity building of adults to create enabling environments; 3. children's dialogue and representation with senior management on boards at local and/or global levels; 4. organisational strategies focusing on children's participation in governance, supported by policies, resource allocation, child-friendly information, quality standards, and staff training; 5. child-friendly accountability mechanisms to ensure that children and young people are able to provide feedback on decisions affecting them, and to ensure feedback is provided to young people about decisions made; 6. capacity building of children and young people to strengthen knowledge, skills, and confidence to express their views and influence decisions affecting them; and 7. support for child-led groups.
The case study below exemplifies many of these common elements found in organisational models of child participation in governance.
Case study: Global Youth Advisory Panel, Plan International Building upon existing good practice at national levels, in 2013 Plan International developed a strategy to scale up children and young people's participation in organisational decision making.
The strategy was developed and approved in the Members Assembly-the highest level of decision making. The strategy encouraged the formation of youth advisory panels at national levels, with opportunities for youth representatives to participate in management forums. A global youth advisory panel (GYAP) was also formed with elected representatives from some of the national level youth advisory panels.
The GYAP brought together nine young people aged 12 to 24 years; five representatives were from different regions (one per region), plus four spaces for young people from national organisations (in fundraising countries). Each young person was elected for a term of 3 years but was asked to step down once they reached the age of 24 years. The GYAP held a face-toface global meeting once a year, and regular skype calls were organised during the year. Two members of the GYAP participated in the Members Assembly twice a year, one as a participant, and one as an observer (who would then participate in the following meeting). Robust child safeguarding procedures were applied.
From 2014 to 2018 the GYAP's priorities included • taking part in meetings with the Members' Assembly and the International Board providing insights and new perspectives on the global strategy and on global initiatives; • providing guidance to staff on working with young people; • supporting the development of national panels of youth advisors; and • contributing to the development and co-facilitation of online training modules for staff on "working with children as partners."

Lessons Learned
• Prepare and train adults: Significant preparations of adults and flexibility to adapt formal ways of working is required to help create a child-friendly enabling environment.
The online training module "working with children as partners" was appreciated by staff.
• Ensure child-friendly information: The development and dissemination of child friendly information is required to support informed and meaningful participation of young people.
• Time constraints: Time constraints of young people and logistical challenges around different time zones and different languages create significant challenges in organising regular online calls with GYAP members. It is especially hard to connect and actively engage young people living in rural areas who have less access to Internet, and who may require a translator to contribute.
• Identify relevant decision makers: It is necessary to analyse which decisions children and young people want to influence, and to analyse who makes these decisions in order for young people to meet and dialogue with the most relevant organisational decision makers.
• Consider sustainability from the outset: It is important to have adequate human and financial resources to sustain a global level mechanism in the long-term.

Organisational and Individual Mindset and Capacity
International organisations tend to be hierarchical in their decision making structures and processes, creating barriers to children's influence on decisions affecting them (World Vision, 2014). When there is no high-level mandate to engage children in organisational decision making and governance, it is often ad-hoc, dependent on individual motivation rather than strategic prioritisation and support. Lundy (2018) stated, "If [children's participation] cannot be achieved meaningfully, then it appears to be considered legitimate to not do it at all. From a human rights perspective, this is truly striking. It is difficult to think of another situation where it would be presented as honorable to deny an individual the enjoyment of their rights on the basis that full compliance is impossible" (p. 346).
Across diverse socio-cultural contexts, adult mindsets and cultural norms are barriers to Supporting global-level children's advisory structures and processes introduces a number of logistical challenges; for example, working across different time zones and languages (Collins et al., 2020). At national and local levels logistic challenges are also experienced, particularly when efforts are made to reach and include children and young people from rural and remote communities that may lack Internet access. It can also be logistically and administratively challenging to arrange meetings at times that are convenient to all. Organisational jargon and acronyms create additional challenges when developing and using child-friendly language.
Formal Board and/or management meetings also create barriers to meaningful participation of children (Save the Children, 2010).

Structural and Sustainability Challenges
Organisations have faced challenges in sustaining global children's advisory structures, as they tend to be resource-heavy in terms of necessary human, material, and financial resources to support quality processes. A senior advisor from a child-focused agency mentioned, "There was some funding for [children's participation in organisational structures] for a few years, but when the funding stopped the momentum stopped." Global children's advisory structures are harder to sustain when they are initiated at the global level, dependent on short-term funding, lack broader organisational policies to ensure budget allocations, and lack child involvement in the design and implementation.

Lessons Learned on Enabling Factors
Organisational Buy-In, Resources, and Processes Meaningful participation of children in organisational decision making and governance requires a high-level mandate. Senior managers who believe in children's rights and capacities as social actors are more able to institutionalise children's participation in organisational decision making. Organisation-wide buy-in and capacity building of staff is necessary to foster commitment to listen and respond meaningfully to children's views.
Children's participation in organisational decision making at all levels tends to be more effective when it builds upon existing good practices at the local and national levels, such as communitybased child clubs, peer groups, school councils, and child networks. Existing children's collectives provide structures and spaces for children and young people to elect their own representatives to be part of governance matters that affect them at different levels of decision making. Where there is an existing organisational culture supporting children's participation in programming and experienced and committed management and field staff, there are increased opportunities to build meaningful participation into organisational management and governance (see the case study below on World Vision Romania's experience with their national children's consultative committee).
Quality participation requires dedicated resources in staff time and budgets (Lundy 2018;Tisdall, 2015). Children's participation requires investments in processes over time, building children's knowledge, skills, and confidence, as well as prior investments in staff preparations and the development and dissemination of child-friendly information and child-friendly tools.
Additionally, virtual communications are increasingly available and feasible across geographies and time zones, proving valued contributions to increasing inclusion (Collins et al., 2020). When developing accessible information and tools, it is necessary to ensure budgets to adapt materials for children and young people of different ages and abilities. A senior advisor explained, "We need to ensure resources for staff and operations. This is critical to make the child participation standards and principles compulsory, rather than recommendations." Especially when working with the most vulnerable children, quality participation requires investments in processes that enable children to develop relationships and trust, to gain knowledge, skills, and confidence, and to have genuine space to discuss and analyse priority issues affecting them (Collins et al., 2020 Building on the strong networks at the local and county level, the CCC aimed to engage creatively with senior leadership and the Board to systematize the flow of information and interaction between young people and adults to exchange ideas for decision making.
The CCC provides a conduit for children to share their needs, priorities and ideas to donors, senior management, board members, and other WV ambassadors. Children serve for 2 years on the CCC and are selected by their peers. They meet face-to-face twice a year for a time of mutual learning and planning. Children also have the opportunity to share ideas on strategic plans or initiatives.

Lessons Learned
The success for this process was that we started from the community level with existing structures and initiatives, and each year we invite [add] a bit to have children's structures at the country and national level. (YEP, coordinator) • Adult support: Staff whose role includes dedicated time focused on child participation in each ADP. It takes a lot of time to provide child-friendly information and to ensure their views are shared with the leadership. WV staff members, teachers, and board members-all need to know how to engage with and listen to children effectively.
• Budget and resourcing: Ensure project funding for meetings and seed funding for child-led projects. Build the capacity of children's councils to generate resources locally to support initiatives.
• Representation: Children vote for their representatives, and all children irrespective of ethnicity and ability can have the opportunity to represent others.
• Training for children on soft skills: Working with media, public speaking, advocacy, graphic design, working with adults, project design, planning and implementing activities.
• Accountability: Feedback loops to ensure children know how adults and decision makers take their views into account.
• Sharing ideas and activities with the leadership: Children want to inform senior leadership and the board about their agenda.
• Organisational capacity building: Build group cohesion and ownership before taking on activities, campaigns, or meeting with leadership.
• Children as partners: Consider children as partners with ideas that are equally important to those of adults, otherwise you lose them from the very beginning.
I think the event that bring adults and children face-to-face, this is the best space. It is important because we have a lot of ideas and adults need to help us to implement them, and if you talk to them face to face, you tell them this is our problem and this is how we think, how to solve it. Adult chaperones accompanied child representatives who travelled to Geneva for the DGD on CHRD. Adults and children received extensive briefings and trainings to enable them to engage meaningfully at the DGD and to keep everyone safe. Children were central to decision making at the DGD itself. They set and influenced its agenda, including the role of members of the committee, and Child Rights Connect members, in addition to informing the decision makers with their own presentations and views.
As a result of their participation: • Ongoing feedback received by Child Rights Connect from children and network members (using a variety of formats) confirms that children feel empowered and motivated to influence decisions affecting them, and they continue to participate in their local contexts.
• Supporting children in the DGD proved to be an effective way of linking UN human rights mechanisms with children's local realities. It was also a strong way of bringing civil society together to share, learn, and collaborate.
• There is now a sense of urgency, responsibility, and commitment to empower children in all Child Rights Connect's work. It is now in the process of institutionalising child participation not just at project level, but as a permanent structure in all aspects of its organisational decision making and governance.
• Child Rights Connect uses the CRC Committee's nine basic requirements to assess the quality of children's participation and improve based on their learning and the feedback from children.
• Network members, especially smaller organisations and those with limited experience of supporting children, have improved child participation in their own contexts at local and national levels, as a result of shared experience and learning.

Lessons Learned
• Involve children from the very beginning of the process.
• Ensure awareness of the process: Make sure that children and adults have awareness and understanding about the reasons why, who, how, where, and when children are participating.
• Assess existing governance structures and think creatively about ways to ensure children can be empowered in a meaningful and safe way: Do existing structures need to be adapted? How can children be empowered in this process, maybe they want to suggest different spaces that would also work for them?
• Be flexible and adapt: Children's participation is a step-by-step process that can be revised and updated along the way. There is no perfect model, but it is necessary to put time into focusing on the preparations, planning, and follow-up.
• Share experiences and learn from others: Involve experts when possible, and benefit from their experience.

Focus on Inclusion and Child-Centered Mechanisms
When working with existing community-based child groups, children have been encouraged to develop and/or apply selection criteria that support representation of children from diverse backgrounds in relation to gender, dis/ability, ethnicity, and school/working background. Not requiring English proficiency supported more inclusive participation opportunities. Furthermore, increased outreach with parents, caregivers, and communities is often required to ensure informed consent and local support for the participation of most vulnerable girls and boys (GenerationOn, 2010;More et al, 2018;World Vision, 2017). A young person from Peru explained: "In my organization we look for children from every background, there is no discrimination. We communicate via Facebook, there are boys and girls who live in more disadvantaged places, their parents support them, we try to look for those children." Informal and formal spaces are needed for children to prepare in their peer groups and to dialogue with organisational leaders to influence organisational decisions that affect them.
Structures such as child clubs, consultative committees, and school councils can provide important space for young people to regularly come together to discuss, prioritise, analyse, and action plan on these matters. Crucial efforts are required to ensure that children meet with the right people who have power to make decisions that are most relevant to them. A young person from Romania explained, "It is good when we meet adults that have status in society. We speak with them, and we tell them what we have to say, they hear us, and something is happeningproblems are resolved, or something is improved." Further, strategies, structures, and processes to meaningfully engage children in organisational governance have been more effective when young people have opportunities to inform and influence the design of the model (Adolescent Health Initiative, 2014; Arunkumar et al., 2018;Collins et al., 2020;Save the Children, 2009;World Vision, 2013, 2016. When children have space and support to influence agendas and initiatives, it increases opportunities for child-led innovation. As one young person from Peru added, "There are also times when they have made decisions without consulting us. In this situation we dialogue and express our discomfort very appropriately and we fix these problems. I think there is a lot of trust with the [field] staff." Children tend to be most motivated to participate in programming, strategy development, and advocacy when the process and activities are interesting, and when they are able to discuss and influence concrete matters and decisions (Charles & Haines, 2019;Collins et al., 2020;GenerationOn, 2010;O'Kane & Barros, 2019;Tsang et al., 2020). Use of creative methods and tools, such as participatory appraisal tools (body mapping, ranking, problem trees), drama, and

Children's Perspectives on the Decisions They Want to Influence
In this section, key findings are presented from focus group consultations with young people in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Palestine, and Romania and interviews with young people in Peru, the Philippines, and Romania, concerning decisions they want to influence in World Vision, their reasons why, and how-to approaches to support their meaningful participation.

Capacity Building of Young People
The study findings show that young people can inform plans and design of capacity-building and skill-building activities for children and young people to enhance personal development, active participation, and their abilities to defend their rights. Support to strengthen child-led entities are also important to help them develop inclusive, democratic structures. Children also expressed their desire to communicate and network with other young people to exchange and learn from one another, to reflect on their needs and achievements across countries and regions.
The Importance of Influence Children gave many reasons on why it is important for them to influence the organisation's decisions: 1. Children are key actors and have rights.
2. Children know their own problems, priorities, and gaps to be addressed.
3. Children have good ideas and can be good role models.
4. Children can influence more relevant and effective strategies, programmes, and budget allocations.

Children can develop their knowledge and skills and lead innovations.
6. Children's perspectives should be integrated in community development.
7. Children can share feedback to inform monitoring and evaluation, and feedback to children is important to be accountable.
8. Children can help recruit good staff.
Furthermore, a child representative from Palestine mentioned: We want decision makers to listen to our voice, address our needs, and implement projects in a way that suits and benefits children. . . . We can participate in the board of directors at the national level to influence their decisions for the benefit of children. We are the ambassadors of children's challenges, needs, and goals.

Conclusion & Recommendations
The purpose of this landscape assessment was to identify common elements in different organisational models of child participation in governance; challenges to children's participation 1. Ensure child participation has high-level organisational commitment, organisation-wide buy-in, senior leadership endorsement, and management oversight and accountability (Elsley & Tisdall, 2014).
2. Ensure clarity of purpose and scope of accountability to children.
3. Build upon existing good practice, processes, and structures, moving from local to global, ensuring participation permeates all spaces rather than being treated as standalone activities (O'Sullivan, 2019).

Increase investments in staff capacity building on children's participation, including
increased budget allocations to support participation (Lundy, 2018;Tisdall, 2015).

Build children's capacities and strengthen child-led networks, including co-design and
planning with children and other forms of transformative participation (Tisdall, 2013 • a formal mandate from the president; • the development of a strategy and operational plan with allocated resources (human, financial, material) considering sustainability from the outset; • the establishment of a cross-organisation-wide steering team including senior managers; We need to be careful to avoid having only the top-level listening to children. We need to show it is a priority for the organization, and it should be happening across our main functions at the country and local levels (INGO, senior manager).
• management oversight and accountability, including staffing time to facilitate and coordinate efforts across the partnership; • investments in staff preparation and training to ensure intentional and consistent efforts at all levels to create spaces for leadership to hear from children and their experience of programming at the community level; • development and dissemination of child-friendly information and materials; and • investments in capacity building of children and young people, with particular efforts to engage and build the capacity of the most vulnerable.

Ensure clarity of purpose and scope
To design an appropriate strategy and operational plan to support children's participation in organisational programming, management, and governance, it is essential to have clarity of purpose and scope. This is important to make the most effective use of available resources (human, material, and financial), including consideration of children's and staff's limited time availability.
Clarity is required to ensure that children and young people have genuine opportunities to influence decisions affecting them. This requires further analysis and planning with children and young people in regional and national contexts to identify decisions that are most relevant to them. It also requires further analysis of governance and power dynamics to ensure that children and young people meet with the right people. For instance, if board members have more of a good governance role, rather than a

Build upon existing good practice processes and structures at local and national level moving from local to global
Children's participation in management and governance should build upon the foundations of quality participatory programming, and existing child-friendly accountability mechanisms. To enhance local ownership, cultural relevance, and sustainability it is important to build upon existing good practices and structures at the local and national levels such as community-based child clubs, children's congress, children's and young people's networks, etc. For example, the establishment of Children's Consultative Committees could build upon existing local child clubs and networks, while ensuring reflective action-oriented efforts by children and adults to ensure inclusive and equitable representation.
• Ensure meaningful participation of children and young people in all programming. Children and young people have emphasised the importance of having more space to inform and influence situation assessments, programme design, planning, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation. This also requires the development and dissemination of child-friendly information, and efforts to seek feedback from children and ensure feedback to them in every project.
• Strengthen and support quality implementation of children's feedback mechanisms (CFM) in all countries. The mechanism may also be strengthened to support children to develop and submit "alternative reports" to management.
• Identify four to six countries to pilot support for national-and/or area- This is essential to ensure ethical practice, ensuring informed assent and consent by children and their caregivers, inclusive non-discriminatory practice, risk assessment 3 The Concerned for Working Children in India's experience of "Makala Mitra" is a good practice, whereby children identify "Children's friends" -adult allies who officially become "makala mitra" help them get more space and influence. and safeguarding, and feedback to children. It is also essential to plan for sustainability. Consider how children stay engaged during (and after) their participation? How will they share their skills with their successors? What role will they have in recruiting others?
4. Increase investments in staff and staff capacity building on children's participation to create a child friendly enabling environment. Whenever possible start to build the capacity of children at young ages, around 10 years so that they can be part of child participation governance for a longer period (WV staff, Romania) efforts are required to develop and disseminate child-friendly information on issues, policies, and decisions affecting children. Efforts to support children and young people to come together regularly in their own groups-including age and gender-specific groups can enhance opportunities for exchange, reflection, and peer learning.

Increase investments in
Capacity building of children on child rights, life skills, gender and disability inclusion, public speaking, advocacy, and digital technologies can equip children with increased knowledge and skills to assert and defend their rights. Investments in appropriate (online) tools can maximise opportunities to collaborate remotely where necessary, taking efforts to ensure children representing marginalised groups are included.
Furthermore, use of the Article 15 toolkit can help members of children's groups reflect and strengthen their own child-led groups and initiatives.
Support and strengthening of children's networks enhance opportunities for peer learning, exchange, and collective advocacy. Networks also provide platforms for election and representation among children and young people at higher levels.
Networks of children and young people can cut across groups supported by different agencies and can link to broader platforms for children and young people to influence external governance processes affecting them.

Reflect, document, learn, exchange and adapt with children
Most important is to start systematic efforts to support children and young people's participation in organisational decision making and to reflect, document, and learn with children, staff, and communities. Flexibility and adaptive learning are crucial, so that improvements can be made along the way.
The inter-agency toolkit to monitor and evaluate children's participation can be used to inform monitoring and evaluation of the scope, quality, and outcomes (Lansdown & O'Kane, 2014) and establishing feedback mechanisms with and for children during the planning phase should be prioritised.
Trial and error is the way to go… I think a constant process of self-reflection will help get a good result, especially if we focus on how to do this at a high level… Be courageous to try. (INGO manager)