Advancing Children’s Rights and Holistic Well-being through Intergenerational Partnerships
Act2gether is a global initiative of the Learning for Well-being Foundation designed to foster personal and systemic transformation through partnerships between children and adults.
Since its inception, Act2gether has supported meaningful child and youth participation across five countries, ensuring that children’s voices are not only heard but recognised as essential to decisions that shape their lives.
Act2gether develops methodologies and tools to build core capacities and position participation as a catalyst for systemic change.
Despite international commitments, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children’s participation remains largely underdeveloped or tokenistic. Structural barriers, institutional hierarchies, and cultural assumptions about age continue to marginalise young people from decision-making spaces. Children are frequently positioned as beneficiaries rather than partners.
Even where participation policies exist, the quality of relationships between generations determines whether engagement becomes meaningful or remains symbolic.
Act2gether addresses this gap by placing intergenerational partnership at the centre of efforts to realise children’s rights and holistic well-being.
Act2gether is grounded in the Learning for Well-being Framework, which recognises four interconnected dimensions of human experience:
Within this framework, participation is understood not merely as inclusion, but as a developmental and relational process. It requires cultivating core capacities such as listening, sensing, reflecting, and co-creating.
Through intervention models adapted to local contexts, Act2gether supports transformation across education, health, governance, and civil society systems – strengthening cultures of dialogue, shared responsibility, and inclusive change.
Act2gether fosters enabling environments where children and adults collaborate as partners across different levels of society.
Core mechanisms include:
Each implementation builds capacities in both children and adults, creating systemic opportunities to rethink power dynamics, elevate youth leadership, and embed well-being within institutional practice.
Act2gether has contributed to personal and structural transformation across Bolivia, Palestine, the Netherlands, Germany, and Israel by creating meaningful opportunities for intergenerational partnership.
Through locally led initiatives and strategic collaborations, the programme has:
These experiences demonstrate that when children and adults collaborate across generations, they generate solutions grounded in empathy, shared learning, and mutual respect.
Act2gether continues to develop adaptable, evidence-informed models that advance children’s rights and holistic well-being globally.
