On 28th and 29th March, 2022 in Zagreb, Croatia, the second Policy Lab Conference “Students’ participation – a path towards inclusive and democratic society” was held within the Start the Change project. The Policy Lab in Zagreb comes as a second event of this type, after the first policy event, Policy lab 1: “Policy and Practice to Start the Change” that was held in May 2021, as an online event via ZOOM platform.
On this policy event, teachers from 15 schools from North Macedonia, Croatia and Portugal and the policy decision makers from the educational field finally got the chance to meet in person and exchange their own and discuss new ideas and future activities on how to strengthen the student voice and participation in their schools and educational systems.
The key speakers on the event were Ivana Borić, Ph. D., University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences with her keynote lecture “The right to participate: How to achieve meaningful participation of children” and Clara Pretus Gomez, Ph. D., Autonomous University of Barcelona, Department of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine, who talked about “Vulnerability and radicalization”.
The participants also had the chance to actively work on preparation of the National Policy Road Maps that will outline the country specific policy issues at school, local and national levels as well as offer step by step recommendation for policy improvements, through various workshops.
These national road maps will also serve for creating the Synthesis Policy Brief that will be produced in the last year of the project and will serve as a guide for all EU countries on possible ways for implementation of similar interventions.
