The mission of The Freechild Project is to advocate, inform, and celebrate social change led by and with young people around the world, especially those who have been historically denied the right to participate. We do this by facilitating training and workshops, and through our website.

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Our Philosophy

The Freechild Project vision is of a society where every young person is engaged in powerful, purposeful, and positive social change. Our goals include:

• Engaging every young person in critical democratic action centered on growing community, culture, and society.

• Promoting the evolution of society's perspectives of youth, moving every young people from passive actors in society towards becoming engaged leaders throughout their entire lives.

• Improving the recognition of community problems while diminishing the belief that there are "youth problems," per se.

• Increasing the adult awareness about diversity among children and youth.

• Advocating every young person seeing themselves as part of a society, communities, movements, and other things larger than themselves.

• Deepening society's perspectives about youth work and schooling, moving them from peripheral and "feel good" to central and essential.

• Engaging and supporting young people and adult allies to critically examine their work and our society.

We believe it is completely unethical to exclude young people from participating in the actions that affect them most. We facilitate action and learning dedicated to opposing adultism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, social hierarchies, and other forms of oppression. We draw inspiration from the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Counts, bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and other philosophers, theorists and activists, and we support anyone who works for freedom and against oppression.

 

Learn more about our Assumptions; examine our Theory of Change; interact with our Measure of Social Change; and explore our Principles of Authentic Youth Engagement.

Organization

Freechild is a project of CommonAction Consulting, a consulting group located in Olympia, Washington, USA. Learn more about CommonAction.

 

The Freechild Project was founded and is directed by Adam Fletcher, who works together with allies from across the USA and around the world to maintain its content. Learn about our Staff, our Advisory Board, and find out more about the Awards, Citations, and Recognition we've received.

 

In addition to this website, The Freechild Project offers training and consultation to individuals and organizations interested in sharing our goals.

 

This website was designed and is maintained by Adam Fletcher. The original Freechild logo was created in 2002 by Colin Ahrens, a high school student in Olympia, with the current version by Doug Smith in 2007. Photos throughout the website were taken by Freechild staff or are used with permission. Some graphics were created by Rini Templeton.

 

We welcome questions from young people, media inquiries, and information requests from youth-serving organizations and advocates around the world. Please contact us.

By using this website, you consent to having read our privacy policy and terms of use. Freechild Project Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.