Visiting Neighbourhood Children Parliaments in India
Photo: Vladan Lausevic
Currently, I am in Delhi, the capital city of India. During this week, I have visited five Neighbourhood Children Parliaments in different parts of the city.
The concept of Neighbourhood Children Parliaments is part of the Neighbourocracy idea created by social activist Joseph Rathnam from the southern Indian state Tamil Nadu.
The basic idea of neigbhourocracy is that every human has a neighborhood and that all of us can engage in democratic conversations and decision-making processes in our neighborhoods, villages, districts, communities, and local areas.
Joseph is also my mentor, and I came to India to learn from him since one of the ideas is to promote neigbhourocracy in Europe.
Photo: Joseph Rathnam
Joseph has also developed the idea of the Children Parliament. The basic idea is that children in their neighborhoods and schools are engaged in practicing problem-solving through democracy.
This means, for example, that children have positions as ministers of health, ecology, finance in order to deal with different policy areas and spheres of everyday life. The idea is also that children are taught and trained early to develop as democratic citizens from local to global level. Starting locally as in villages and neighborhoods and up to the Children World Parliament.
Supervised by NCP Minister of ecology
One important aspect of the Children Parliament idea is that democracy can be practiced and achieved without party politics. Thereby, children and youth are thought to engage for their local communities through sociocratic and democratic procedures. The important values are cooperation, conversation, and community in the universal sense.
Joseph in conversation with young ministers in an NCP.
After visiting five NCPs, I feel more empowered, encouraged, and engaged with my work with democracy. Thereby, I am looking forward to promoting the same ideas in Europe and globally. After all, one of the main things with democracy is that democracy needs to change and improve all the time, due to social and technological changes.
Photo with community staff, ministers and mentors.
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