Following their recent trip to Geneva, Jess interviews Cathy and Rona on their experiences as the adults supporting our MCPs to share evidence with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
You can also listen to this conversation here: https://spoti.fi/40qlUj9
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Jess [00:00:01] Hello there! my name is Jess and I am the Communications and Campaigns manager over at Children’s Parliament. And today I am joined by Rona Blackwood and Cathy McCulloch to talk about their recent trip to Geneva. Would you both like to say hello, please?
Cathy [00:00:14] Thanks, Jess. Hi, I’m Cathy, I’m Co-Director at Children’s Parliament and I was very excited to have this trip to Geneva with Rona and the girls.
Rona [00:00:22] Hello everyone, I’m Rona Blackwood. I’m the Head of Programmes at Children’s Parliament and very happy to tell you all about our very successful trip to Geneva with our members of Children’s Parliament.
Jess [00:00:33] Fantastic. Thank you, both. I wondered, just to set us off and to kind of set the scene a little bit, would you be able to tell me a little bit about why Team Scotland, and perhaps who Team Scotland were, in Geneva a few weeks ago, please?
Cathy [00:00:48] Yeah, thanks, Jess. Team Scotland is a partnership between Children’s Parliament, Scottish Youth Parliament, Together and the Children’s Commissioner and his team. And we were – we work very closely together most of the time. Children’s Parliament and SYP try and work together as much as we can just to make sure that the age range of early years through to 18 and beyond for SYP is covered when it comes to children and people sharing their views and experiences with decision makers. And we both work with children and young people right across Scotland and we make great effort to make sure that children from diverse backgrounds are involved. And so we formed a strong team to head out to Geneva. We’ve all been there before, so we’ve got experience of it. Yeah, we had a lot to build on. That’s why we were there. That’s why Team Scotland was. I think that, you know, we do have to think very carefully about these kind of opportunities, whether, excuse me, whether or not this is something that we feel is a worthwhile investment. So we think that taking children to the United Nations is important. I think the opportunity that children have to physically be in a space that we see on the telly and to feel the value that is placed on them, not just by us at Children’s Parliament, SYP, the partnership Team Scotland – but also by people from around the world who are welcoming to the children, speak to the children, give them opportunities to share their views and experiences. I think that’s a really important message for the girls themselves to feel that sense of value and agency, but also to make sure that children are represented. Too often older young people have opportunities. Exciting opportunities come along and folk think, Let’s get older young people, because they’re able to do this sort of thing. They can just slot in really easily. And we are really committed to making sure that children are there to demonstrate that they too can do it and make a valuable contribution. And I think that that in itself sends a really strong message to other children – and adults – that this is worth the investment. You know, the views that the children were sharing were not their personal views, they were the views of children from across Scotland. And they did an awful lot of work beforehand to think about what children were seeing, what they meant, what they would like to change. And so they were really the message bearers at the UN to make sure that those messages were shared in a way that people really got and understood and felt in their heads and in their hearts.
Rona [00:03:23] It’s really important that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child hears directly from children and young people in their own words and in their own way. Obviously, they can receive that information from reports and from evidence. But to actually hear it directly from children is really, really important. And it was a huge opportunity for our members of Children’s Parliament to to be part of that, as Cathy says. And it’s a real opportunity as well for then the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child to put pressure on our government, on our Scottish Government, to, you know, to hear what issues are really important to them and what change they want to see back in Scotland. So whilst the children are, you know, in Geneva representing Scotland at the UN, it’s also really about leveraging change and progress on what’s important to them back in Scotland, and the members of Children’s Parliament felt very proud and very excited to be part of that journey.
Cathy [00:04:25] And I think that and just the chair of the committee, Mikiko Ōtani, who’s been over to Scotland and taken part in our Sittings, you know, she’s flies around the world and all the countries in the world she’s aware of and she engages with them. We all have to go through this reporting process. But at the end of the meeting, the first thing she said was she put her hand here and she said, I can see the amount of work that the girls have done in order to be able to come here and to share this experience. And really, that’s what it’s about. It’s about, you know, it’s not about putting kids on a bus or a plane and say off you go and take your place and we’ll take some photographs. But I think what it does is, is demonstrate, that kind of reaction demonstrates that this is meaningful. It’s not any kind of tokenistic opportunity. There are certainly things that we can improve about that and we do provide support to Child Rights Connect and the UN to help them think about how do we make this a better experience, but that – the very experience of even going through security, of finding yourself in the building and looking around and just saying, Oh my God, look at this. You know, this is – these are places we see on the telly. Let’s get a selfie here. Let’s get a selfie there. They really felt the magnitude and the importance of it, you know, in their bones. And, you know, they just didn’t stop talking about it and they probably still haven’t stopped talking about it. So, hopefully these messages are being relayed to their their schools and the schools are giving them an opportunity to talk and to share as well. And so all those ripples really have a big effect that lasts a long time. And Scotland’s got a really good reputation at the UN for our work around participation. So I think it’s an opportunity for us to build on that. And to say to people, you know, we’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There’s lots we could be doing better and that we’d like to learn from you as well. So this is what we’re doing. What are you doing? And it gives children an opportunity to speak to adults from around the world to make new contacts. I think one of the girls came home with a whole list of new contacts of young people and adults that she’s, you know, determined that she’s going to add to her contact lists. It’s amazing. People would never think that that was, you know, a 13 year old would even think about that or be interested in that. But they are. When they’re treated seriously and they can see it has an impact, that’s when it’s worth doing.
Jess [00:07:00] Oh, it all just sounds so super. But I suppose the bit that I kind of would like to ask you about next is, as you’ve said, it’s not just putting two girls on a plane and saying, here you go, let’s go to the UN. There’s so much work and preparation that has to be done beforehand. And I wondered, Rona, if you could perhaps tell us a little bit more about kind of the process that Children’s Parliament goes through to prepare for a piece of work like this?
Rona [00:07:25] I think one of the first things to see is that the members of Children’s Parliament who went to Geneva had been part of numerous projects over the last few years, so had experience of being, you know, engaged in projects in their local community, whether that be about improvement of services in Edinburgh or about safety online, that they’d been part of a child rights approach over a good couple of years actually, and had spoken out. And one of them had been to Cabinet before and another one had been to an Executive Team Meeting with civil servants before. So they were quite experienced members of Children’s Parliament. But that said, even to and even with that level of experience, the preparation to support them to go, you know, is considerable. So you’ve got the preparation to do with the with the girls in terms of working out what issues they want to take that are representative of children across Scotland. So they had to look back at all of the issues and the projects that Children’s Parliament had done and what other children had been seeing and what they felt was important to take to the UN in that context. So there was a lot of sort of preparatory work, a number of meetings with them and exercises we did with them to choose what issues that they wanted to take. But then we had to do that with our partners as well. We had to sort of align that with the Scottish Youth Parliament and with Together and with the Children’s Commissioner. So every time we did something, we then had to then sort of align it with Team Scotland. So we were sort of, the members of Children’s Parliament were presenting as a team. But also it’s really important that the families of the members of Children’s Parliament are involved as well. And one of the girls who went had never flown before, you know. For both girls, it was the longest period of time that they’d ever been away from their families before. They’d never been to Switzerland before, you know, they’d never been to a French speaking country before. So there was a lot of sort of support that we wanted to give to the families. And the families were amazing in terms of the offer of the support that they gave to their children. But we had to you know, we had to sort of do a lot of sort of practical support in terms of all of the logistics and the emotional support as well in terms of making sure that the families felt that they knew who we were, that that met us on the doorstep and in their front rooms before. That they knew they could contact us about anything and to make sure that the girls had a really positive time. So relationships with the families was quite considerable. And also we contacted their schools, of course, as well, so that they could see what they were achieving and what they were participating in and how that would align with their own learning in their own schools, and also how to make sure the school were supportive in terms of their of their time off and giving them support when they returned as well. And then you’ve got all the other logistical stuff in terms of, you know, where are we going to stay and where are we going to? How are we going to get from A to B? And aligning everything with our Team Scotland and with the four other nations that we were working with – five other nations because Jersey was there as well. So there’s a lot of coordination with the Scotland team and then with the wider UK delegation and with our international partners, Child Rights Connect. But I think the most important component of the preparation was that the girls were excited to go, that they felt really prepared to go in what they wanted to say and the issues that they wanted to go, but they also felt safe and that they had strong relationships with Cathy and I as well. So we made sure there was time for pizzas and and car journeys together so that they really felt really sort of close, had a relationship with us and and sort of, you know, safe and happy to be in our company. What have I forgotten Cathy? Probably a few things.
Cathy [00:11:29] No, I think you’ve covered it. I mean, I think that the sign for me was when there was an additional meeting programmed in, and Rona and I were both thinking, I think this would be too much for them because, you know, they’ve got a lot on their plate. We’ve done all this work already. And they both said, Oh, no, we really want to do it. We really want to do it. So we then had to, we were in a position then with our relationships, with our prep, that we could then have a difficult conversation with them about another focused piece of work which wasn’t particularly child friendly in its delivery. But the girls really, really enjoyed the experience. They really wanted to do it. They really enjoyed the experience. And it’s part of that process of them sharing their views so that they’re helping folk in Geneva at the UN move towards something that is truly participative, because at the moment participation is, you can hear it in every second sentence everywhere, but actually it’s not often people take the time to think about, do we need to have, do we need to do this? Do children need to be involved in this? Okay. If they do, how do they need to be involved? What do we need to have in place? What’s in it for them? What’s the point of them being involved in it? What’s the potential impact of their involvement, and then what happens afterwards so that it doesn’t just come to a cliff edge and we say thanks very much and off you go, and that’s the end of it. We never hear from them again. So it’s you know, there’s – it’s easy to think that it is just a trip to Geneva or a trip to here or there or a trip to a conference. But if children – our big thing at Children’s Parliament is that children have agency and that they feel they have a right to be in their place and they’re not there for us to mediate for them. They’re there to speak for themselves. So if children are going to have the confidence to speak and to be able to speak in such a way that they’re listened to, that takes an enormous amount of preparation, and it’s all done through as Rona says, having time to develop good relationships with the staff who are going to be with them. And that means sometimes, you know, you might have a programme for an hour and a half and halfway through you ditch it because you think we’re not making any progress here. They haven’t had time to just chill and have children. So we’re just going to play daft games for the next 15 minutes and that’s what you do. And eventually it does all fall into place because you’re going at the speed of the children. I think sometimes we feel as if we’re pushed a little bit, oh wait a minute, are we pushing too hard, we’re always checking in. We’re always thinking about it. And I think that got them in the place where they just thought that last minute request didn’t faze them. I mean they had questions about it, but it didn’t faze them. They wanted to do it.
Rona [00:14:04] They were very confident on what they were talking about because they’ve been part of projects before and because they were able to pull on, you know, what other children had told them through other pieces of work. So when they spoke about education reform, they could pull on, you know, the gender equality in education calls to action, or if they wanted to talk about how adults make rights real, they could talk about the projects they’d been involved in and what that looked like and felt like. So the issues they chose to take to Geneva, which were about making rights real – adults making rates real – and UNCRC Implementation, which were about education reform and equality issues and around mental health. They were all issues that not only did they feel passionate about them and were able to sort of to pull in their own personal experience, but they had this sort of – they had the evidence of wider members of Children’s Parliament, and they felt confident to do that. But it was quite funny, there was one evening when we were there and we were doing our final preparation, you know, in bits and pieces so they weren’t too overwhelmed with, you know, it always being big discussions or exercises about preparing for these, you know, three big meetings that they had. But there was one point where Cathy and I said, well, I think I think they’re getting tired, we’ll not do any more tonight, we’ll do it tomorrow. And we went off and had some fun in the morning and the girls turned around and said I think it’s time to prepare now, Cathy and Rona. We were having our dinner, we were having our cheese fondue and they said, I think we should do a bit of preparation now. So, you know, we’re really hot for tomorrow. It was like Cathy and I had been told off, that we’re going to be a bit more serious.
Jess [00:15:42] I love that. That’s almost like being told to do your homework. It’s just brilliant.
Cathy [00:15:46] It’s true.
Jess [00:15:49] But I was thinking as well as you both were talking, it’s such a testament, isn’t it, to the process and to the girls themselves thinking about the magnitude of the buildings that they’re in, never mind the people that they were meeting with, but also being able to talk so confidently on those topics and be a representative of their peers back home in a space they’ve never been in, in a country they’ve never been in, to talk with such confidence and for it to be so, so impactful.
Cathy [00:16:18] And I think that’s about, it’s about them really feeling confident with their brief, with what they’re going to talk about. Because if I think back to children who’ve been before to take the mural or to take the shields, you know, they were basically just, we just said – we set up the mural, they helped to set up the mural, helped to set up the shields. And we said, okay, there you go. That’s your space. You can talk to people now. And that’s what they did. And the adults all stepped back, you know, physically stepped back. The children went and stood around their shields and their models, and they had individual small group conversations with people from all around the world without us having to do any extra additional preparation. And it was the same for the girls in Geneva. They were so confident about what they thought about the issues that were being raised that that’s what gets you into a place, that it feels successful, that it feels worthwhile.
Jess [00:17:12] So, just to kind of pull us together, to kind of finish off our chat, one of the last things I wanted to ask you both was what your key takeaways from the trip were. Thinking, you know, these conversations that we share on our podcast series are really all about putting children’s rights into action. And I don’t know that we can really give an example more of children’s rights in action than taking two children to Geneva. But what, what was your key learning, I suppose, or your biggest point that you took away from from the trip?
Cathy [00:17:45] I mean, I think a lot of it is just reinforcing what we’ve learned in the past, which is – and Rona’s alluded to some of the things in terms of the prep. So that’s making sure that there’s – sorry, ambulance just passed there – you know, building relationships with families is really critical and keeping the schools on board and helping them think, we’ve got some work to do, you know, with them, helping them think, how do we use this ourselves? Remembering that they’re children, and they need to have fun. And, you know, we might have this really, really very important deadline with very important people, but they’re still children. And at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work for them as children, it’s not going to work when you get to the place. I think there’s – every time I go, I always am pushed a wee bit bit further to think: we need to be, we need to negotiate what works for children a bit more, so that, you know, people tend to automatically think about young people and they’re going to sit them in a certain formation and there’s going to be a panel, and there’s going to be this. And actually that doesn’t really work very well for children. So. We need to be encouraging people to have conversations to think about: is it appropriate for us to have younger children and older children in the same space talking about the same issues? Should we be thinking about having separate meetings? Does the venue work? Can we move the furniture around? You know, these kind of basic things that we you know, I think maybe in Scotland we’re a bit doffy-cappy and we think we’re in this amazing building, we cannot possibly do anything differently. But I remember this meeting with the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and she was on the floor and she had sweets going on around the floor. One of the children said at one point, I just don’t feel it’s going to make much difference. And she immediately grabbed the sweeties that were on the table and made this pattern that went underneath the table, around the chairs, around the back. And she was pointing out things don’t always work out in a straight line. They don’t always go from A to B in a straight line. But, you know, I’m not sure how comfortable her officials were with her doing that. But actually it works. It makes a difference because it improves the relationship, it improves children’s levels of comfort: they’re enjoying it; they see her as a real person therefore they speak to her in ways that they wouldn’t if it was a formal sitting around the table meeting. So these kinds of practicalities, I think are really important and people have got a right to raise the question. Sometimes it’s not possible to change things and the UN is a, you know, they come together for three months of periods and it’s all full on and it’s really busy and they’ve got a formal agenda to get through. But that was the you know, the feedback from the committee was that that was the most effective pre-session that they’d had with children and young people, it was the largest. There are things that they could do differently. So it’s a step on the way to that. So it’s about harnessing that experience, taking the pros and the cons for it and feeding that into what happens next.
Rona [00:20:39] I would certainly agree with you, Cathy, about the child friendly approaches and the child friendly spaces – definitely learning for everybody, I think in terms of how we continue to make that better. But I think in terms of, you know, maybe in between the preparation and the meetings and the panels that the girls are part of. I think fun was really important and a really big part of Children’s Parliament DNA is making sure that there’s time to have fun and fun meant, you know, seeing a bit of Geneva going on, you know, taxi boat trips for the first time, having your first ever fondue, trying to say thank you in French in every shop you went to, so it’s all you know, cultural learning. But it was fun. It was great fun. You know, first fondue was great fun. Food. We talked a lot about food, you know, Swiss cakes, Swiss cheese. It was a big part of it, definitely. Food was a big part of it. And the other thing I think was that it was meeting new people and friends. The members of Children’s Parliament got on very well with the members of Scottish Youth Parliament. And there was a real exchange of, I would say, friendship there. And the support went in both ways. The older young people were very supportive of the younger members of Children’s Parliament, building their confidence in what they had to say, but also vice versa. There was a lot of support from the younger children. There’s a reassuring that the older members, of Scottish Youth Parliament and what they were doing was great and I think that sort of confidence that they had, you know, individually, they then were able to sort of have quite a high level of confidence as Team Scotland, because they were supporting each other. They were building friendships across age groups and across issues. So I think food, fun and friendship were definitely really important issues. But I think the building of the confidence – of the girls’ confidence – you know, it was supporting them really, so that they that, you know, they knew what they what they had to say was important and they had that real confidence in that what they had to say was important and that they have a right to be sort of taken seriously. And they went into those spaces I think really having that, which was which was wonderful.
Cathy [00:22:59] Yes. And I think the only other thing I would add to that is the word that was coming through as you were speaking Rona was equality. I think the girls felt equal to ask them to each other, to the MSYPs and to the Commissioner’s staff, and just when they came in contact with people, they understood that, well, hey, hang on, I’ve got a right to be here, the same as everybody else. I’m an equal here. And I don’t think that comes by, it is just is not automatic. It doesn’t come. And it’s unusual for children to feel that in the education system, just because of the way the education system is set up, it’s very hierarchical. And so there’s a lot of work to do to help children understand they have a right to question, they have a right to ask, they have a right to make suggestions. They’ve got a right to say no, that doesn’t really work for me. They’ve got a right to say, to suggest alternatives. And that in itself is a huge learning thing for them to know that they can do it, whether or not they can hang on to that when they go back into their normal environments, we’ll see. But I think that’s happening more and more and it’s definitely something that we should be promoting and hanging on to.
Rona [00:24:06] That’s why, what you said earlier, Cathy, it’s so important about follow up. You know, follow up with the families who have been so supportive, follow up with the children themselves, in their schools and obviously with the Scottish Parliament in terms of what they’ve said and what they’ve called for. So I think, you know, follow up is really, really key at this stage now after the event.
Jess [00:24:24] That’s brilliant. Thank you both so much for your time today. What I’m going to do is I know that there are lots of reports and there was a brilliant Twitter thread that followed all of the girls’ activities across Geneva. So I’m going to link those in the bio to this episode so that they’re easy for everyone to find.
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In February 2023, we were delighted to support MCPs Arden and Omima to join Team Scotland on a visit the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, in Geneva to share what key issues they’d like the Scottish Government to address.
You can listen to Arden and Omima’s reflections here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/Zi8PQw1Ueyb
You can find the report Arden and Omima shared with the UN Committee here: https://t.co/26cfggvjVC
You can also catch up on more of their adventures here: https://twitter.com/Creative_Voices/status/1622505378905829376?s=20