Clare Hanbury

Involve children in the 'send my friend to school' campaign.

Thanks to Karen Garvin for this guest post....The campaign she writes about is about inspiring young people everywhere to care about and speak out about getting every child access to schooling. Reading that there are 67 million children without access to education stopped me in my tracks today. Statistics rarely move me but this one did....

If you are able to involve the youngsters you work with to join this campaign please do....

Best wishes

Clare

 

Send My Friend to School 2012 –‘Go for Gold’

In just a few weeks athletes from around the world will converge on London for the Olympics to compete and achieve to the best of their abilities. But globally, 67 million children are still held back from reaching their potential because they don't get an education.

As part of the Global Campaign for Education every year millions of teachers and students from around the world remind their leaders of the important promise they made to get every child into school by 2015. And it is working; 50 million more children are in school right now than in 2000.

But like an athlete hitting the wall, progress has faltered. With only three years to go before the finish line of 2015, we need a new surge of energy to make sure all children get the chance to take part in the Great Education Race.

If you sign up to take part in Send My Friend to School in 2012 you can get a free resource pack, which includes a DVD, teachers guide, posters and stickers to introduce your school to taking part in this important campaign. http://www.sendmyfriend.org/take-action/order-schools-pack

Your school can join thousands of others to call on world leaders to get all children into school by 2015.

This year's campaign, inspired by the Olympic Games, calls on leaders to 'Go for Gold!' for education. Creative activity and teaching ideas will help learners engage with the issues, and empower them to raise their voices with their political representatives.

There are already over 5,500 UK schools taking part this year, asking world leaders to ‘Go for Gold’ and helping to get universal primary education.

At www.sendmyfriend.org you’ll find extra information about the campaign, including lesson plans, extra videos, case studies and background material.

The ‘Go for Gold’ online animation and game sets out the issues in a fun and accessible way, ideal for home and classroom use. http://www.sendmyfriend.org/take-action/go-for-gold

On current trends over 50 million children will still be out of school by 2015. So, its vital that we send a clear message to our leaders that they need to do more.  

Send My Friend to School is run by the Global Campaign for Education, a partnership of charities and teachers’ unions, and involves young campaigners in over 100 countries.

Cambodian Children Speak OUT!

Just had a look at this report....it may be of interest to you. The summary is from Save the Children's Site

Cambodia Children's Report: My life. My suggestions

 The report "My Life My Suggestion" (2010) is released by Cambodian Children and Young People’s Movement for Child Rights, a network of children and youth from 20 organisations operating in 16 provinces that is supported by Save the Children.

The report highlights the dire situation that Cambodia’s children face in their daily lives and provides a number of important recommendations to engage the Royal Government in solving the problems that affect the living situation and development of children. Statistics reveal that twenty-six percent of the children surveyed said they have never received care and warmth from their parents and a quarter said they were forced to do various dangerous or unsuitable jobs, including pulling carts, performing wage labour, begging, working in rubber plantations, working at construction sites and factories, scavenging for scraps, logging and finding firewood.

Also documented is the limited extent of the country’s child healthcare services, as twenty-three percent of the survey participants stated that hospitals were far from their homes, and that health centres were small, understaffed and under-equipped. Moreover, twenty-seven percent of the children said they faced regular discrimination on the basis of poverty and race, and for having disabilities or suffering from HIV/AIDS.

The report was sent to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2010 and it is hoped that the Committee will push the government to introduce measures and practical actions to ensure that Cambodian children truly become holders of all rights enshrined in the Convention.

Guest Post: The Power of the Youth, Young People in Pakistan Fight for the Right to Education

I am very pleased to host this excellent article by Lisa Davis of Rights International. In it she reflects on the work of the Ilmpossible – a youth lead campaign in which young people participate in raising awareness of children’s rights to education.

 Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world,

indeed it’s the only thing that ever has’- Margaret Mead

A steering committee of 20 young people from across Pakistan are leading a national campaign to raise awareness of the right to education for children and young and improve the state of education in Pakistan. This is a right granted under article 25A of the constitution, inserted by the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010. However, their is currently a lack of awareness to this rights and enforcement within the country is weak.

The Ilmpossible steering group coordinates a national network of ambassadors, which work across the five provinces. The steering group along with the wider network, carry out awareness raising sessions within local communities, they talk with children, young people and families about the right to an education and encourage parents to use the current school within the local area and make demands on the local government when provision is bad. They also use media to spread the work about the right to a free education for children and young people aged 5 to 16 years. This has including writing articles, producing radio shows and using social medial like Facebook and Twitter.

An Ilmpossible Ambassador deliver a presentation on the rights to education to parents in a village in Sindhi.

Mehak Ameer an Ilmbossible ambassador said: We have serious concerns about the state of education in Pakistan. This is leading to educational crisis in the country, which is threatening the social and economic well-being of the nation. We want to help ensure people know about, speech up for and access there right to education.

The Ilmpossible ambassadors, have drive and ambition to ensure children and young people receive their right to education in Pakistan and they have much work to do. Despite they’re being a constitutional right to free education the Pakistan Task Force in 2011 declared an education emergency.

Only 7 million children out of the estimated 19 million primary aged children are in school. Public expenditure remains unacceptably low and out of the child in education 21% dropout before the age of 11 years.

The steering committee currently meets twice a year and have recently took part in a 5-day programme aimed at exploring participant and advocacy. As part of the programme the steering group examined issues like strengthening and coordinating national and regional action plans, developing stakeholder relations with international groups like UNICEF and national groups like the Pakistan Coalition for Education. They also looked at designing and delivering seminars and tools such as reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

An IImpossible training meeting attended by the author of this article, Lisa Davis

 Mehak Ameer said: Those five days certainly provided me a great opportunity to learn. Each one of us has unique skills based on our experiences. Sharing of skills undoubtedly help us in reaching our goals ensuring people access their right to education the activities facilitated by a team have provided us with new ways of  effectively being a voice of the voiceless.

Supporting Ilmpossible does not stop here. Six of the ambassadors will come to the UK to take part in a further 5 days of workshops. These workshops aim to develop the young peoples leadership skills, networking capacity, see youth led campaigns in action in the UK and allow them to see how education system is administered in UK.

1. Rights International is a non-government organisation working to promote and protect children’s human rights. Rights international focuses on support children’s right to education, health care and rights to participate in decision-making. The work of Rights International is led by Lisa Davis CEO.
2. Ilmpossible is a youth led campaign to raise awareness of children’s right to education

For further information please contact

Lisa Davis; Rights International

Twitter: Rights_inte

07854187396 

Child Participation and Adults First! FREE training materials

This workshop report, Adults First was developed by a team in South East Asia and is a great resource for anyone planning to run training on children's participation. Its also a useful reminder that for children's participation to succeed we have to put the training and support of the adults involved FIRST. The structure of  the report is set out below - each of the numbers represents an activity conducted in the workshop:

Introduction

1. Understanding childhood

2. Expectation check, objectives and rule setting

Understanding children’s participation

3. Unfair treatment

4. Why involve children?

5. What is a child?

6. Proverbs about children

Defining children's participation

7. What is children’s participation?

8. A working definition of children’s participation

9. The right to participate

10. History of children’s rights and children’s participation

11. Discovery

Ways of involving children

12. Sharing experiences

13. Practice standards in children’s participation

14. What went wrong?

15. Designing workshops for capacity building on children’s participation

Appendices

• Some useful web sites
• Scenarios for some possible additional activities
• Handout on facilitation skills

Child Participation in Child Protection: A FREE Toolkit and Training Module

I spent a part of 2010 preparing two sets of materials on children's participation in child protection for The Child-to-Child Trust and The Keeping Children Safe Coalition:

1. A toolkit for adults working with children to involve them in their own protection; and

2. A module to support trainers of these adults to provide guidance in some of the key concepts and skills needed to do this work.

The project involved testing the toolkit and training module in Sierra Leone, with colleagues in a number of different organisations based throughout Africa. All these organisations are members of the Keeping Children Safe Coalition. The materials took almost a year to produce and after a few months (with rather a high price tag), I am delighted to say that you that online versions of both sets of materials can now be downloaded for FREE. The materials are also available in French and the Spanish version is coming soon. It is important to emphasise that while these materials aim to encourage children to get involved in child protection, it is the responsibility of adults to ensure children are safe.

Here is a bit more on the materials...

The Training Module on Child Participation in Child Protection is the 5th Module within the Keeping Children Safe Tool 3. You will need to download the entire Tool by clicking here. Module 5 is from pages 91 to 132 and is set out in the following way:

Module Five: Childrens’s Participation and Child Protection: A Guide for Training Adults

• Exercise 5.1: Children’s participation
• Exercise 5.2: Children taking action on child protection
• Exercise 5.3: Overcoming barriers against effective children‘s participation
• Exercise 5.4: Working with groups of children
• Exercise 5.5: Active Listening
• Exercise 5.6: Asking open questions

Tool 4 aims to provide adults working with children with exercises and activities that will get them started in learning about how to keep themselves and other children safer. Tool 4 can be downloaded by clicking here. Tool 4 is structured as set out below:

Introduction     

Module One: Children recognise what is child abuse           

• Exercise 1.1: Children’s rights
• Exercise 1.2: Feeling safe and
• Exercise 1.3: Understanding child abuse           

Module Two: Children keeping themselves and others safe

• Exercise 2.1: Talking about feelings
• Exercise 2.2: Decision-making
• Exercise 2.3: Children keeping children safe           

Module Three: Making organisations feel safe for children

• Exercise 3.1: Safe or Unsafe in communities, schools, and projects?
• Exercise 3.2: Listening and talking about feeling unsafe
• Exercise 3.3: Setting up children‘s groups to help keep children safe            

Module Four: A Resources Guide         

Over the next 2 months I will be writing a series of posts based on these materials. 

Several organisations have already conducted training using the toolkit notably SOS Children's Villages and Plan International. It would be wonderful to hear your ideas and experiences of using and adapting the materials and to have links to any exercises you have improved, added to or expanded. I would be very pleased to feature these experiences, ideas, comments and cases studies on the blog.

*I was commissioned to write the toolkit and module by the Keeping Children Safe Coalition and The Child-to-Child Trust with support from The Oak Foundation.

Institutionalising Children's Participation

Today and in relation to quite a large scale government programme that I'm involved with, I was pondering some more on how we go about institutionalising children's participation. The education sector and 'the school' is the most obvious focus for our attention as schools often form an hub for families and the community that can not only reflect what society wants for its children but also challenge and develop this.

I like many aspects of the UNICEF Child Friendly School initiative and I was reminded of this checklist they have developed (see below). What I also like is that their definition of 'child friendly school' includes the ideas of being 'child centred' and 'child seeking' ( i.e. actively identifying excluded children to get them enrolled in school and included in learning, treating children as subjects with rights and State as duty-bearers with obligations to fulfill these rights, and demonstrating, promoting, and helping to monitor the rights and well-being of all children in the community.) I have not come across the term 'child seeking' before, and I like it.

For schools to really be child friendly they will need to 'unpack' a lot of the ideas listed below but the list is a good start. If any of you would like to unpack the list with me then let me know! I am having a go and with the help of the Oak Foundation's M&E framework for children's participation which is already becoming threadbare with overuse!

13 CHARACTERISTICS OF A RIGHTS-BASED, CHILD-FRIENDLY SCHOOL

1. Reflects and realises the rights of every child  --  cooperates with other partners to promote and monitor the well-being and rights of all children; defends and protects all children from abuse and harm (as a sanctuary), both inside and outside the school

2. Sees and understands the whole child, in a broad context -- is concerned with what happens to children before they enter the system (e.g., their readiness for school in terms of health and nutritional status, social and linguistic skills), and once they have left the classroom -- back in their homes, the community, and the workplace

3. Is child-centred -- encourages participation, creativity, self-esteem, and psycho-social well-being; promotes a structured, child-centred curriculum and teaching-learning methods appropriate to the child’s

Plan International and Nokia collaborate to Promote the Voice of the Child

Bamboo Shoots: a Training Manual on Child Rights from Cambodia

Child Rights Training

Bamboo Shoots is a training manual on child rights, child protection and child-led community actions for facilitators working with children and youth groups. It  was originally created by Plan in Cambodia.You can download it here.

Bamboo Shoots was developed to: define what are childrens rights, increase children’s understanding of their rights as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC); raise children’s awareness of their rights and build their capacities to claim them; create opportunities for children to recognize, identify and prioritize issues and problems or gaps in relation to child rights violations; and provide opportunities for children to influence agendas and action regarding identified and prioritized child rights violations.

Bamboo Shoots takes complicated concepts and breaks them down into easy language and engaging, interactive sessions. It also offers good resources and background material for facilitators so that they can manage the sessions well.

A Request for Free Materials!

 Hi there readers!

On Friday/Saturday, I had an amazing 24 hours attending the launch of the Children's Radio Foundation  (CRF) and then participating in a conversation with Kofi Annan talking on how young people can contribute to development in Africa. More soon on the many insights he brought me! Do look at the CRF site and listen to the programmes on their podcast site demonstrating how children are bringing their ideas and work to the world!

It was with a wry smile that I gave them a copy of a book and audio tape I developed for The Child-to-Child Trust with the wonderful radio producer, Sarah McCrum in the early 1990's. The book, We are On the Radio (only available from me!) is all about mobilising children as young reporters. It has nothing to teach the CRF but it was a joy to use it to make a connection with them and get quickly to detailed conversations about their approach, their training curriculum and their many projects all over Africa.

While many of those attending were able to offer well deserved financial support, I am putting together a toolkit of free resources that can support the youngsters who are wishing to report on issues such as HIV&AIDS, nutrition, environment education, child protection issues etc. I am therefore gathering all I can to send to them in a couple of weeks. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear from you - either publicly in the comments box or you can get me on my contact email or through twitter - my follow me name is ClareHanbury. With your permission I will also be using the links to set up a tools section on this blog so that the work I do for CRF will also be useful for all of you.

THANK-YOU!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Clare

How to Engage Street Children To Talk about Children's Rights

I wrote a blog post on this child right and children's participation topic some time ago but I have wanted to link it again now the Durban Declaration has been published, the build up to the next street child cup is underway and to add a few more resources that have been published since this time.

In March 2010, street children from around the world were welcomed to Durban, South Africa to compete in the first ever Street Child World Cup. Children from nine countries came together to find their voices through the global language of a game they love. Teams worked with specialist coaches to express themselves on the football pitch and with artists who enabled them to tell their stories. The Street Child World Cup placed street children centre stage, celebrating their potential and providing a platform for them to talk about the issues that matter most to them. Through a process led by the children themselves, the Deloitte Street Child World Cup began the process of forming a global Street Child Manifesto.  Together, they called for street children’s rights to a full, healthy, dignified life, as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), to be upheld.

The manifesto which has become, The Durban Declaration, can be downloaded by clicking this link. You will aslo find on this site news about the activities and run up tot he 2014 SCWC.

As I was the lead facilitator for the conference, I wanted to make generally available ideas about the specific activities we used and on how this process worked. You can download the conference briefing notes here.

During the conference I was very pleased to work with two amazing colleagues from Plan international who did specific sessions with the girls. Here isa film  that includes Plans work at the street child world cup

For further resources on stimulating discussion and working with children you may find the last section in this toolkit useful. It is something I developed with staff and partners of the Jacobs Foundation and is free to download here. Click for the toolkit under the heading intervention and application.