Children's parliament

Kempele, a youthful municipality with many children became concerned about how to get the youth involved in municipality functions, how to get their voice heard during the planning and decision making processes. The concern drove representatives of both schools and the municipality to the drawing table.

A youth participation model was developed in cooperation with the representative teachers and municipality administration. This model is directly based on the Norwegian Porgrunn municipality's solution. Kempele's Children's Parliament was founded with its 17 child and youth representatives.

The parliament assembles twice a year for a 'full session'. Issues such as children's and youth's environment, well-being and educational matters are brought up. In these sessions youth can present so called long-term development plans and can decide on 'immediate' implementation of projects.

Objectives

The objectives of the Kempele project in short are:
::: to promote child and youth participation and decision making possibilities throughout the schools and the municipality
::: to convey children's and youth's opinions on the municipality planning and decision making processes and
::: to make children and youth interested in partaking in municipality administration.

Student councils

The children's and youth's real influence and participation happens in student councils and youth recreational facilities. Schools play a central part in influencing the development of this function as the children and youth are best reached through schools. Kempele lower secondary school started their student council at the beginning of 1999. The upper secondary and sixth form schools already had functioning student councils. These councils consist of elected class representatives. The representatives gather and prepare motions for the Children's Parliament meetings. Each student council has a tutor teacher.