Children’s Speech to Parliament presented Finance Minister: weekly Zoom sessions with pupils

Het Nationale Theater, ProDemos information centre and ABN AMRO Foundation have worked together in recent years on an educational programme that has resulted in an annual Children’s Speech to Parliament. Under this programme, children can make their voices heard while learning more about the Netherlands, articulating their thoughts and ideas, and working together. In a series of lessons and a workshop, the pupils came up with a list of their own ideas and proposals, which was presented to the Finance Minister at Segbroek College secondary school in The Hague on 14 September.

This year’s list shows that the children are concerned not only about the environment and the world, but about individuals too. They argue for lowering the voting age to 15, limiting flying to once a year, giving every person a working computer, setting up weekly Zoom sessions between politicians and school classes, and no longer eating meat. They asked the Finance Minister to share all this with her colleagues.

The Children’s Speech to Parliament will be held in the theatre on Budget Day, Tuesday 20 September. Dutch playwright Sem Anne van Dijk has used the pupils’ input to write the Children’s Speech, which will be performed as a theatre production in Theater aan het Spui in The Hague. All children who worked on the speech will attend the show.