A culture of children’s rights
C31 – Centre for Creating a Culture of Children’s Rights has been dedicated to creating a context for living children’s rights, and the inspiration for its name comes from Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines children’s right to culture, play and free time.
Growing up in
dignity
A culture of children’s rights
Since its establishing, the C31 – Centre for Creating a Culture of Children’s Rights has remained dedicated to creating a context for living children’s rights. The inspiration for naming it came from Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is defining the right of the child to culture, play, and leisure activity. A Culture of Children’s Rights is a set of values, attitudes, policies, and practices, that ensure that the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are made an integral part of social institutions, educational systems, and intergenerational relations.
A Culture of Children’s Rights is a way of living that involves understanding, respect, and implementation of children’s rights, and where children and young people are provided with opportunities to express their perspectives, influence the issues concerning them, and grow in an environment that is respectful of their uniqueness, dignity, and contribution.
The concept of the culture of children’s rights recognizes children and the youth as active holders of their rights, who are active participants in creating culture, values, and knowledge, as well as in developing a vision of society and contributing to it by bringing up current issues and perspectives of their generation.
Through its work, C31 is contributing to building a society where the voice of children and young people is listened to, their participation is encouraged, and the respect of their rights becomes the foundation of joint life-living, individual and social development among the generations.
The Beginnings
C31 – Centre for Creating a Culture of Children’s Rights was established in 2007 by a group of students at the final years of their university studies, who had gathered three years before in the Children’s Cultural Centre Belgrade, as a group of young people who following the political changes in Serbia, felt the urge to contribute to building of a democratic society, through various programs of informal education that they created and implemented with children and young people. The leader of this group was Maša Avramović, who, with her vision, inspired its gathering and guided the engagement and activities of the group.
Through various projects that were implemented within the Children’s Cultural Centre Belgrade in the beginning of 2000s, this informal group directly and actively got involved in a number of important yet emerging processes on the national level that were aimed at shaping the institutions, laws and regulations, and educational programs concerning children’s rights.
Participation in the implementation of national Consultations on introduction of the Children’s Ombudsman, Involving children’s voices in global child protect report, Campaign on stopping violence against children and corporal punishing of children, Consultations on the importance of the Child right to play, are some of the most important initiatives that ushered these young people in the field of child’s rights and influenced their further professional engagement.
Today, after almost two decades of our activity, we remain dedicated to creating a culture of children’s and human rights. We are now developing new projects and recreating the existing ones within current times and new contexts.
The most important projects implemented by our organization, we have grouped under two program models: SHARE program and ENGAGE program.
