MINDBLOOM partners meet in Lisbon for project’s kick-off meeting
- CIS-Iscte
- Apr 23
- 2 min read
On April 21 and 22, 2026, the team of MINDBLOOM met at Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, for the project’s kick-off meeting and a conference, open to the community, to present the project and its partners.
MINDBLOOM - Mental Health, Inclusion, and Democratic Participation: Building a Learning and Outreach-Oriented Model for All Children, funded by the European Commission (CERV-2025-CHILD-101253577), is an interdisciplinary, multinational project that aims to make democratic participation genuinely accessible to children whose life experiences have systematically denied them that possibility. Led by the project’s coordinator, CIS-Iscte’s researcher Carla Moleiro, the kick-off meeting served as the formal starting point of the research project, aligning partners tasks, and how the project work will proceed.
The meeting also comprised a conference titled "Children's Rights and Participation: From Mental Health to Co-Decision,” open to the community, that took place in the afternoon of April 22, aligned with a close connection with stakeholders in the community which attended the event, in particular those that work with vulnerable children and youth such as those in out-of-home care and unaccompanied youths.
The event started with an intervention from CIS-Iscte’s director, Margarida Garrido, and a presentation of the project by Carla Moleiro and a roundtable with project partners. The conference also counted on two invited keynote speakers, Mónica López López (University of Groningen), with the talk “Listened to and taken seriously: A research journey on children's participation in Child Protection”, and Sofie Denise de Smet (KU Leuven), with the talk “Transcultural trauma care for refugee youth: The role of social support structures in family and community relationships”.
Margarida Garrido (photo by Hugo Cruz) Carla Moleiro (photo by Hugo Cruz) First roundtable (photo by Telmo Amaro) Audience in conference (photo by Hugo Cruz)
The event closed with the roundtable “Practices & Testimonies”, with sharing of experiences of community partners (Casa Pia de Lisboa, Aldeias de Crianças SOS, InPulsar) and Kifayat Ullah (Pakistan), an unaccompanied youth living in Portugal.
Mónica López López (photo by Telmo Amaro) Sofie Denise de Smet (photo by Telmo Amaro) Kifayat Ullah (photo by Telmo Amaro) Last roundtable (photo by Telmo Amaro)
