"Always collaborate with me"
"Trust is crucial"
"Boys' advice on equality"
"Decide with each of us"
"Safe with each other"
"Queer in school"
"Collaboration in patient pathways"
"Understanding drug use"
"Safe with a safety advocate"
"Short way to friendships"
"Meet absence safely"
"Let us talk about feelings"
"The way forward"
"Safe for us"
"Needs to help for us"
"They think they know best"
"Not mean"
"It's about us"
"Talking safely in school"
"Talking safely in the child protection system"
"Ask us and you'll find out"
"Safe in class"
"Life skills"
"Understand what's most important"
"Give us a chance"
"It was supposed to get better"
"Talking kindly"
"Angry on the outside, hurting on the inside"
"If I was your child"
"Right and certain"
"If I was your child"
"Wisdom about drug use"
How can we help young people before they start using drugs? What is useful help from help systems and schools? What must change in Norway?
16 000+
children and youth have participated in qualitative surveys
70 000+
professionals and students have gotten advice from children
300+
meetings with politicians
50+
knowledge reports produced
70+
weekend gatherings with young people
Straight from the source to politicians
Politicians and other decision makers need to know from children and young people. To ensure their thoughts and viewpoints are presented in correct ways, children and young people are invited to present and explain directly to those in power. This also helps the authorities to fulfill their obligations in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child
Straight from the source to professionals
New board elected by CF's representative board
Board members Åslaug Krogsæter, Toril Taklo, Marit Ursin, Vanessa Marin Gundersen, Leon Bell, Arne Kristian Myhre, Steffen Iversen. Cathrine Torp was not present when the picture was taken
“The foundation’s board has the overall responsibility for ChangeFactory’s activities. The board shall ensure sound operation and good development in line with the foundation’s purpose. The board shall have broad and comprehensive expertise to safeguard the foundation’s purpose and assist in the development of ChangeFactory Foundation.
The board shall ensure that the management and the organisation satisfy society’s requirements for openness and accountability, and shall work consciously to ensure that partners, stakeholders, employees, and children and young people who are involved can have full confidence in ChangeFactory and its work.”
The board for 2026 consists of:
- Vanessa Marin Gundersen, former Pro in CF and journalism student (Head of the board)
- Arne Kristian Myhre, Chief Physician at the Children and Adolescent Clinic, St. Olav’s Hospital (Deputy Head of the board)
- Marit Ursin, Professor in interdisciplinary childhood and youth studies at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, NTNU
- Åslaug Krogsæter, Former teacher, principal, municipal director, education director and process advisor in KS’s (The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities) elected program
- Steffen Iversen, environmental worker, former football coach and professional football player
- Leon Bell, former Pro in CF and Higher Executive Officer at the Norwegian Civil Affairs Authority and former Pro
- Cathrine Torp, Communications and Strategy Director at The Norwegian Institute of Public Accountants
- Toril Taklo, Head of Department at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service
The first two board meetings have been held and the board members have divided their areas of responsibility between them.
ChangeFactory’s board of directors with Pros and factory workers
Better decisions when politicians make them together with children
In the project NO DECISIONS WITHOUT US, young people from Denmark, Sweden and Norway have come together for the third time to inspire politicians and other decision-makers to understand and remember how much more effective it would be to make more decisions together with those affected by the decisions.
This Saturday we had a visit from members of parliament and there were nice dialogues between the politicians and young people from the three countries about what politicians and other decision-makers can gain from listening to and taking seriously the views of the groups of children affected by a decision. Over the weekend, the young people have been working on the content for the website, which will be launched in March. Thanks to Nordic Cultural Contact for the support in implementing this project.
Politician Tage Pettersen with young people from CF, Danish School Pupils and Unga Örnar
Politicians Mona Nilsen with young people from CF, Danish School Students and Unga Örnar
Politician Liv Gustavsen with young people from CF, Danish School Students and Unga Örnar
Young people have advice on what makes the police safe
The police, like all other public services, have an obligation to understand the perspectives of groups of children who have experience interacting with the police when practices are being further developed. This is also wise in order to ensure that the police work in ways that are safe and effective from the point of view of children and young people.
Since 2009, Forandringsfabrikken has gathered experiences and advice from young people who have been in contact with the police. Their responses have been summarized in several reports, including “Justicepros” (2010), “Angry on the Outside, Hurting on the Inside” (2020), and “Not Mean – There`s always a reason” (2021).
In recent weeks, young people with experience of interacting with the police on the street have visited preventive units in two different police districts. The focus has been on how the police can work in ways that feel safe for young people while also working effectively.
Some of the topics presented included:
✔️ What characterizes safe police
✔️ Reasons why young people commit crime
✔️ How the police can create safety and build trust
✔️ How to share information about children in ways that are safe and uphold children’s rights
✔️ How to conduct conversations when the police is concerned in ways that feel safe and helpful
Pupils teach students at Lund University
At Lund University in Sweden, students studying to become teachers were visited by upper secondary school pupils in the subject “School Development”. The pupils explained summarised knowledge from many pupils, and then met with the students in smaller groups.
Nordic project at universities
This form of teaching is part of a Nordic collaboration project, with universities in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Here, ways are being tested where students get to hear knowledge from children and young people – directly from children and young people. The goal is to find ways that work in different places in Nordic countries.
How to collaborate with students
The theme of the day with the students in Lund was collaboration between teachers and pupils, both with individual pupils and with groups of pupils. The young people started by explaining why adults in schools have to collaborate with pupils, and what must be the basis for it to feel safe for pupils to express their opinions. They also explained what adults in schools can do before a decision is made, when pupils have expressed their opinion and after a decision has been made, so that pupils feel that they have truly been involved and taken seriously in the decision. The young people also gave advice on what adults can do if what one or more pupils want is not possible to achieve.
Helpful for the students
The feedback that was most noticeable from the students was that it is very helpful to hear from, and talk to, pupils about how to create safety and good collaboration in practice. Many said that it gave motivation to be a teacher who asks pupils about their opinions and takes their opinions seriously.
Thank you so much to the students and teachers at Lund University for having us!
Municipal leaders must decide with children
Young people from Denmark, Sweden and Norway recently met to make films and online resources for municipal politicians in the Nordic region. They wanted to inspire them to take their share of responsibility for ensuring that children are involved in all decisions that affect them in the municipalities. Earlier this autumn, the session-theme was decisions in schools, and over Christmas the theme will be national decisions.
Children must be taken seriously in all decisions that affect them. This applies to decisions about leisure activities, sports, low-threshold services, assistance services, budgets or when starting new initiatives. The answer that is repeated from children is that when they are allowed to participate in decisions, what is decided can be more accurate. Important? In a time of tighter municipal finances, municipalities must spend money wisely! Thank you to Danske Skoleelever (Denmark) and Unga Örnar (Sweden) for an engaging and good collaboration so far! AND thank you to Nordic Culture Point for the support and the opportunity to carry out this project!
LEARN SAFELY - online resource for teachers, build on advice from each other
How can teachers help students feel safe in the classroom, in group work and in other learning situations?
In the project Learn Safely, around 260 students in Norway and Portugal have shared their experiences and advice – turned into practical tools for teachers and films with advice from students.
The tools show how teachers can:
🧡 Create safety in the classroom
🤝 Collaborate safely with students
👥 Do group work in safe ways
🛑 Stop trouble in safe ways for students
On the online resource Learn Safely you will find films and tools created from advice from students in Norway and Portugal, which show how safety can be created in everyday life at school.
Learn Safely is an Erasmus+ project, created in collaboration between Forandringsfabrikken (Norway) and ComParte (Portugal), with support from the European Union.
For teachers and other adults in school:
👉 Use the website as inspiration and support in your work for safe and inclusive learning situations.
💛 Students know what makes learning safe.
See more here: learnsafely.org
The knowledge festival WHERE CHILDREN PAVE THE WAY
Young people and the Mayor opening the festival
Children and young people have advice and opinions that adults need. Adults need this in order to be able to make good decisions for individual children and for groups of children, in collaboration with children. When adults want to listen, understand and take seriously the advice and opinions from children, actions and decisions concerning children can become wiser and more useful for those concerned.
The Knowledge Festival WHERE CHILDREN PAVE THE WAY happened in Trondheim, Norway. Children, young people and adults have for four days highlighted the knowledge that children themselves have. The mayor, Children and Education Commissioner, municipal council politicians, judges and lawyers, researchers, employees of the state administrator, leaders and professionals in schools, kindergartens, help-services, Youth Outreach Services and the police have participated in dialogues with children and young people with experience from schools, activities and help-services.
The Mayor and pupils from Trondheim
Pros and the County Governor team
Pros and NTNU university
Pros and professionals on stage
The Changemethod is now to be used in several countries
Changefactory (CF) has for more than 15 years invited children and young people around Norway to participate in surveys, using a method called the Changemethod. Authorities, knowledge centers and organisations around Europe have noticed the method for many years. Several now want training in how to use it in their country. CF visited the Netherlands last week to learn about the method. The authorities there are now preparing to conduct more surveys next year.
The Changemethod is closely based on Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), a participatory method used in action research. PLA has been further developed together with young people in Norway, to find tools that engage many children and young people here. The Changemethod takes very seriously that children are different and that groups of children have the right to express their opinion, in ways that are felt safe for them.
Since 2009, more than 16,000 children and young people in Norway have given advice in various types of knowledge acquisition that Changefactory has carried out. Visual and creative tools and dialogues have been used. Both at the beginning and at different periods throughout these years, researchers have been closely linked to the work, especially to CF’s qualitative surveys. In recent years, researchers have also had methodological responsibility for each individual survey.
What kind of knowledge directly from children do students in the Nordic regions need?
Many of the professionals that children and young people will encounter in the future upbringing systems are now studying at universities, to become teachers, kindergarten teachers, health workers, psychologists, doctors, work in child and family welfare, police and several other professions.
What kind of knowledge directly from children do these students need? This question concerns the children and young people that the students will later encounter. They have the right to be taken seriously in this decisions concerning them, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The students, teachers in the higher education programmes, professionals in the services, bureaucrats and politicians also have important voices in this.
Changefactory has worked on these topics for the past decade in Norway, in collaboration with teachers at various universities and educations. Now this work has gone to Nordic countries and higher education programmes in several countries have signed up. Together with teachers, students and organisations around the Nordic region, we will find out what kind of knowledge and in what ways this can be done. This is conducted with the support of Nordplus Horizontal.
Here are some of the teaching methods being tested, based on responses from groups of children and young people and in collaboration with the education programmes:
CO-TEACHING: Young people and professors teach together. In dialogues, they go into depth to find out how young people can be met in safe and useful ways. This has been tested in education programmes for child welfare workers, social workers and psychosocial workers
CASE WITH YOUNG PEOPLE: Students are divided into groups and each group meets a young person who explains a situation and shows how children and young people can express themselves in this situation. In dialogues, they work on how students can best meet young people. This has been tested in education programmes for teachers, psychologists, health workers, child welfare workers, social workers and social workers.
KICK: 4-5 young people visit the education programmes at the very beginning of their education to “kickstart” receiving knowledge from children. The young people explain what constitutes good professionalism, based on the knowledge of many children, and how they think children’s rights under Articles 3, 12 and 16 can be secured in good ways. KICK has been tested in most universities in Norway over the past years, in child welfare, teachers and social worker studies.
We look forward to continuing to gather experiences that can inspire the Nordic region – and Europe!
Schools throughout the Nordic countries must collaborate with pupils
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children must be taken seriously in all decisions that concern them. This applies not least in school. Children say that this makes school more motivating and gives life more meaning. Children must be collaborated with, in Norway, the Nordic countries and Europe. The Danish Primary School Act can be an inspiration for everyone, it states, among other things:
At each grade level and in each subject, teachers and pedagogues continuously collaborate with the individual pupil to establish the goals that are sought to be achieved. The pupil’s work is organised taking these goals into account. Determining work forms, methods and choice of materials shall, to the greatest extent possible, take place in collaboration between teachers, pedagogues and pupils.
In a Nordic project, with young people from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, we create films and online resources to explain why, and inspire to how, adults in schools can take their share of the responsibility for pupils to be collaborated with. The project then moves on to how children can be collaborated with in local and national decision-making processes.
Thank you to Danske Skoleelever (Danish School Pupils) and Unga Örnar (Young Eagles, Sweden) for an engaging and good collaboration so far!
Parliament politicians and pros from Changefactory thanked each other
A very important goal for Changefactory is to raise knowledge from children to those who make decisions about laws and frameworks for all children in Norway. Pros and factory workers have collaborated with most political parties in the Norwegian Parliament in 2021-2025, and are very grateful for the way politicians in Norway have shown that they want to understand the views of the groups of children that decisions affect. Then there are differences in how these views are included in decisions: how they are assessed, emphasised and how this is documented, here the Parliament still has a way to go.
In June, Pros and young project workers from Changefactory thanked parliamentary politicians from six parties on both the right and left wing. These were great meetings, with different themes because there were different things to thank them for. Very grateful for that!
The election is approaching and Changefactory will keep a close eye on which parties are promoting children’s rights and which are promoting other issues that are important for children in different life situations, and for the future of those who will take over Norway.
The Parliament Committee for Children and Families celebrated party rights from 12 years
The majority of the Parliament Committee for Children and families in the Norwegian Storting decided, as part of the consideration of the quality pledge for child welfare that the age of party rights for children should be lowered to 12 years by 2028 🎊 The committee invited the Foster Home Association, Save the Children, the Child Welfare Institutions Committee, The Norwegian Union of Social Workers and Changefactory to a celebration and as a thank you for having fought to strengthen the legal safeguards for children.
Changefactory has worked for many years to lower the age of party rights. Children must receive more information and the right to contradiction in their own case. Because:
- Party rights from the age of 12 will give children the right to information, to express their opinions about information from different adults and to share what is important. When children are well informed, they can express their views more easily and adults can make better decisions for children.
- Many reports have shown over many years that the Child Protection System is unable to make good enough decisions for children and at the same time ensure children’s procedural rights. The consequences of this have been significant. Therefore, children themselves must be a party to their case.
- The Children’s Committee writes in CO no. 13, para. 63 that involving children is an important part of protecting them.
- From the summarised views of children, party rights from the age of 12 will contribute to making decisions more accurate for children.
THANK YOU to the majority in the Norwegian Parliament, who took this very seriously 🥳
Children teaching in higher education
Children directly
No decisions without us
The project will make decision-makers aware of how this right is not sufficiently secured, and why it is important for them to take this right more seriously. A core idea throughout the project is for children and young people to convey their own rights. In the project, young people living in various life situations will be actively involved. This contributes to safe and effective schools, kindergartens, and services, as well as more efficient use of resources within systems for children and young people.
Local Youth Xperts
Our Rights, Our Future
Learn Safely
Nordic Network
