Edited by Sandra Meucci and Michael Schwab This special issue is about involving children in environmental planning and urban change. Taking children seriously as self-determining social actors has led to increasing acceptance of children’s place in movements to shape the future. The term “environment” is used broadly to mean children’s rights, social welfare policy, how […]
Archives
Peggy Saika Interviews Sipfou Saechao
And Do You Feel Like This Is Your Country? Sipfou Saechao, a 16-year-old Laotian, discusses growing up in the Bay Area. adolescence, Asian Americans, environmental groups, girls, youth programs and projects Citation: Social Justice Vol. 24, No. 3 (1997): 221-225
Robin C. Moore
The Need for Nature: A Childhood Right The eclipse of children’s access to the out of doors and its implications for their development are the subject of Robin Moore’s “Childhood Without Nature: The Right to Experience.” Moore enumerates factors restricting access to the outdoors as he discusses social and environmental aspects of the changing ecology […]
Ilaria Salvadori
A Dragon in the Neighborhood: City Planning with Children in Milan, Italy Ilaria Salvadori describes an Italian project that was part of an international UNICEF-sponsored research program to engage children in planning activities to improve their environments. The author records and analyzes how children in one district in Milan became involved in traffic-flow design when […]
Roger Hart and Michael Schwab
Children’s Rights and the Building of Democracy: A Dialogue on the International Movement for Children’s Participation Children are engaged in community environmental action and policy work around the world. Schwab and Roger Hart provide a heartening and incisive account of this trend, from the movement of street children in Brazil, which resulted in a plethora […]
Jermaine Ashley, Dawn Samaniego, and Lian Cheun
How Oakland Turns Its Back on Teens: A Youth Perspective Jermaine Ashley, Dawn Samaniego, and Lian Cheun describe how Youth for Oakland United, the site of another of their pilot projects, is working for positive alternatives to crime and incarceration. Speaking of the critical need for safe common spaces for teens and citing preventative measures […]
Diane F. Reed and Edward L. Reed
Children of Incarcerated Parents Diane and Edward Reed alert us to the plight of the five million children who are victimized by the criminalization of their parents. Often they lose one or both of their parents, their homes, and all that anchors them; many respond with sadness, withdrawal, depression, diminished school performance, alcohol and drug […]
Sandra Meucci and Jim Redmon
Safe Spaces: California Children Enter a Policy Debate Sandra Meucci and Jim Redmon discuss how the teenagers involved in their pilot projects are defining their need for “safe spaces” in ways that usefully inform the current policy debate about community safety. Rather than the focus on prohibition and incarceration implicit in current policies, these adolescents […]
Don Reneau
Z and Me Adults fear for the safety of children is a central theme of Don Reneau’s “Z and Me,” an excursion into the author’s relationship with his two-year-old son. Bewitched by a society in which children’s perceptions and abilities (especially those under five, six, or seven) are vastly underrated, we adults have become accustomed […]
Sandra Meucci
What Is a Children’s Policy, Anyway? Sandra Meucci shows how children’s needs for protection is a problematic basis for social policy. Not only does “child protection” derive from an implicitly patronizing power relationship with children, but “protective” policy has also historically been driven by adult fears over the “dangerous classes” of immigrant children, illiteracy, and […]
Dana Saunders
Invisible Youth Reappear! A Review of Two Youth-Produced Videos Another medium used by young people to express themselves is video. In “Invisible Youth Reappear!” Dana Saunders reviews two youth-produced videos, one about life in a refugee camp in Bosnia, the other about racism. Material of this kind is increasingly finding its way to mass audiences, […]
Sangre Latina
Mantel on the Table The script “Mantel on the Table,” written and performed by the young people in one of the pilot projects, the Sangre Latina Youth Theater Group, provides another window into children’s subjective expression of environmental concerns. In this sophisticated satire, a television talk show becomes the backdrop for these Latino teenagers to […]
Julie Chu
Navigating the Media Environment: How Youths Claim a Place Through Zines The importance of media in the lives of children has received considerable attention. From theater to radio, and video to self-published zines, young people’s self-representations yield images, caricatures, and myths that shape public opinion. Refocusing the lens of current debates on media and youth–the […]
Maria Fernanda Espinosa
Working Children in Ecuador Mobilize for Change This interview with Maria Fernanda Espinosa, provides a startling and moving account of her work with urban children who are the most marginalized. Together, over a period of many years, working children as young as eight were able to organize themselves in alternative spaces and draw attention to […]
Roger Hart, Collette Daiute, Selim Iltus, David Kritt, Michaela Rome, and Kim Sabo
Developmental Theory and Children’s Participation in Community Organizations This article discusses the changing ecology of children from different cultures as their identity and their understanding of the social world take shape. Identity is essentially a social concept, one that feminist psychological theorists link to political struggle, and children need to be involved in community in […]
Michael Schwab
Sharing Power: Participatory Public Health Research with California Teens Michael Schwab describes the work of young people in four pilot projects conducted as part of the planning project. Young people from Richmond, Oakland, and Los Angeles developed strategies to address issues that they selected–for example, violence in their community, a lack of recreation centers, and […]