The Child Friendly Cities Initiative introduced by UNICEF aims to help local governments realise child rights by utilising the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as its foundation. Using Lundy’s model of child participation, which focuses on spaces, voice, audience, and influence, this study assesses young people’s participation as child councillors in two programmes in one city in Malaysia. Ten young people who were former child councillors in one state in Malaysia participated in this study. This study employed thematic analysis in analysing the data obtained using focus groups. Based on the data presented, it was clear that adult (the responsible party) understanding of meaningful child participation is still weak. This study offers substantial contributions to the limited body of literature on child participation in Malaysia by focusing on the difficulties of former child councillors in engaging in meaningful participation. Thus, more efforts (for example, by using participatory methods) are needed to educate the responsible party on the importance of addressing the power dynamic between children and adults so that children can participate effectively in decision-making processes.

In the digital world, privacy is one of the most important factors in establishing and building trust. Children involvement in digital media and internet is increasing particularly in embracing the 21st century learning environment. Concerns related to the intermediated role of trust can increase children’s understanding of privacy served as a critical research area to be investigated. Therefore, this study presents the findings from interview (26 pupils) and focus group session (10 focus group sessions involving 57 pupils) with children aged 9 to 11 years in Edinburgh, Scotland, and with eight volunteering parents to investigate their perceptions of trust in the online environment. The findings have shown how trust helped children to be ready to embrace the 21st century learning environment. Trust to children helped in increasing children’s autonomy, help in understanding the parental internet mediation styles, reducing parents’ worries and increase children’s privacy awareness.

This paper discusses the outcomes of an initiative to empower young people as active researchers. It highlights participants’ understandings of their role as researchers in terms of the meaning of research, the research processes, and the participants’ competences, knowledge, and skills. It describes a process that a group of 15 child councillors aged between 15 and 17 years went through that was aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills to conduct their research. Based on the data presented, it was clear that from the participants’ point of view, the research process was challenging and time-consuming since it entailed several steps that needed to be carried out with careful attention to detail. Despite this, the participants were confident in their ability to undertake independent research, albeit with guidance from adults. Their research abilities and knowledge of child rights improved because of their having conducted research. The participants also noted that their learning was more meaningful when they were engaged in the subject topic, supporting the notion that learning by doing is vital. Due to its emphasis on acquiring children’s meaningful participation and illustrating the complex reality of being a part of research, this study has made important contributions to the small body of literature on child participation in Malaysia.