The Book of Good Ideas published

With this project ending, we created another publication – “Book of Good Ideas – students promoting their voice and participation”.

The Book presents projects and activities from 15 schools in North Macedonia, Portugal and Croatia that were involved in this project from the beginning. In these schools, after students made aware themselves of important topics and challenges through focus groups, they tried to respond to some of these challenges through school projects. There were various valuable activities: from attempts to solve the problem of menstrual poverty at school, more active involvement of students in school decision-making, to the production of healthy chips, large sports gatherings etc. The Book is designed in such a way that here, too, space is given to the voice of the students: they themselves are mostly authors of texts about their projects. In addition to a simple overview of the topic, there is a list of necessary materials, goals and outcomes of each activity (so that readers can more clearly see how to implement something similar in their schools). You can also read the students’ conclusions about what they have learned, what they are particularly proud of and what they would tell to their peers.

This Book of Good Ideas is a book for children and young people, those for whom we carry out projects like this with the aim of encouraging them to make positive changes in schools and local communities; so that they feel that, they too can do something if they believe in themselves and recognize the importance of their voice. Some of the initiated changes are visible immediately, some positive changes will only be seen with time, and there is always the possibility that some activities will stop with the end of the project. But we believe that the sense of community, every idea they expressed, the feeling of pride when they saw the realization of their ideas, encouraging messages that they must and can express their opinion and fight to be heard… have left a lasting mark on these children and young people and that the biggest changes were initiated precisely in them. So the result will be much more permanent than the Start the Change project, which is soon unfortunately ending.