The Child Guarantee is the European Commission’s initiative to combat child poverty and social exclusion by ensuring that the most vulnerable children and adolescents have access to a range of essential services.
The Youth Advisory Board (YAB) is the participation body for girls and boys within the Child Guarantee initiative. It was established in December 2021 by UNICEF in collaboration with the Department for Family Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, with support from the Istituto degli Innocenti.
The YAB consists of approximately 20 children and young people with the task of gathering the perspectives of youngsters living in Italy. They actively participate in the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the actions provided by the Child Guarantee.
The YAB and its subgroups worked together to develop a set of recommendations, which were subsequently incorporated into the National Action Plan for Child Guarantee (NAP). They conducted surveys among their peers on Child Guarantee priorities, disseminating them through their own Instagram page, which was created and managed in a participatory manner.
Currently, the primary purpose of the YAB is to support the implementation phases of the NAP in Italy, ensuring that children, especially those in the most vulnerable conditions, have their voices heard and can participate.
