I wonder what a good friendship is?

A manifesto by children.

We didn’t go looking for a philosophy of friendship. It found us in a Zoom room with a group of children we were working with, aged 11-15 years who put their heads together and arrived at a collective burning question: I wonder what a good friendship is?

Rather than defining friendship, the children approached it through metaphor—translating feeling into form. Pancakes, magnets, lighthouses, noodles, oceans: each image holds a fragment of lived understanding. Together, they form a language that is intuitive, sensory, and deeply relational.

We invite you to pause, notice and locate your own experiences within the Manifesto that emerged from their inquiry.

Illustrated by Anthea Lobo, who brought together the children’s raw sketches

What would you add to this list? Share with us in the comments below!

With a bowl of ramen,

Team FUEL

P.S. Want to keep this somewhere close? Download the full manifesto as a PDF below — stick it on your fridge, share it with a friend, or just read it on a hard day.