War is very much a grown-up affair and children are always victims of it. As Ukraine starts to rebuild and rethink the urban landscape, however, children can be key partners in the process.

I have worked with schoolchildren around the world in workshops where they are allowed to present their logical, rational ideas for better streets, public spaces and neighbourhoods. I want to bring this workshop to Ukraine and engage children with fun, rewarding urbanism workshops. We are crowdfunding for the costs of the first workshop in Kyiv - all unused funds will go directly to our non-profit, Bikes4Ukraine.

Let's give them a chance to contribute to the city they will inherit by taking their ideas seriously. Citizen engagement is a fledgling concept in Ukraine so establishing this methodology is important. 

A workshop will engage the kids in their own neighbourhood and we will harvest their ideas and record the process in order to help us think about how the streets and neighbourhood should be developed and plant the seeds of workshops for kids in Ukraine.

I wrote this article about the first workshop I did over a decade ago, where I discovered how brilliant these young minds are:

https://medium.com/@colvilleandersen/young-urban-minds-are-the-best-city-planners-1f76909feda1

This example from Taipei shows that we should never underestimate them and their ideas: https://youtu.be/9PDWzPtpCZ8?t=108

We hope to put on the first workshop in mid-August. We have the space and the community who can bring the kids to the workshop. We just need some urbanism love in the form of financial donations.

Let's get the kids to the table and think new and fresh about how to design the urban spaces we share!