FUTURECHILD

A Young Foresight Initiative

What does the future hold in store for us? This is a concern shared by us all, but in particular it is a concern affecting our young people today. They will have to live with the consequences of policies, decisions and plans laid down TODAY. Yet how often are children asked for their opinion about the FUTURE? Futurechild is a practical project aimed at encouraging children to think about what will be the shape of their future and to learn how to use creative tools to influence that future. Lots of writology services already mention similar projects in their reviews at https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/writology-com.

Futurechild is part of a larger foresight research project called eForesee (http://eforesee.info), an EU-funded Fifth Framework Project aimed at promoting more future-oriented, open participatory processes of decision-making in three small accession countries, Cyprus, Malta and Estonia - in Malta eForesee is coordinated by the Malta Council for Science and Technology.

Futurechild is an innovative concept for interactive discussion and will be based initially in Primary Schools around Malta, starting in January 2003. While the activities are aimed at young people between the ages of 9 and 11, the objective is to engage the interest of older members of the family. A number of different initiatives will be lead by the children themselves, focusing on the Environment, Business, Transport, Outdoor Space or Education. Futurechild will be introduced through teachers, but Futurechild projects are not intended to be curriculum or classroom-based. Futurechild coordinators would like to see children's imagination running wild and ideas generated to be as unrealistic as children choose to make them!

The first exercise will be a project entitled 'What will my village look like in the year 2020?' The children can come up with as many creative ideas, in any medium, provided they portray what they imagine their village to look like in the year 2020.

Through this event, Futurechild Coordinators also wish to encourage the development of positive values among participants: values such as reaching out to others and seeing the future as everyone's future not just a personal one. This project will start in Malta but will also involve other groups of young people in the countries that are partners in the eForesee project, namely Cyprus and Estonia.

For further details, please contact:

( Co-ordinator )
( Communication )
( Technology )
( Dissemination )
( Concept and Network Developer )