On Monday morning April 3, we will start the second challenge. Five weeks time to work on the assignments of your choice. We invite you to closely look at the other contributions in your Circle. Also discuss the similarities and differences among the different groups.
'The right to learn and play'.
Introduction
A report by the UN children's organization UNICEF:
"The right to education exists only on paper for many children. There are about 132 million children who can not go to school, even if they have all that same rights as you.
Currently more children than before go to a primary school, but often the quality of education is poor. Especially girls and children are disadvantaged in rural areas. And who comes from a poor family, stays home four times more often than children from wealthier families.
Despite economic growth in many developing and emerging countries, poverty remains the greatest threat to children. By malnutrition in early childhood learning opportunities are also limited. Especially children in fragile Countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and South Sudan have poor living conditions.
Worldwide, approximately 250 million children are working. They do not get the opportunity to attend education and develop. That makes it very difficult to break the vicious circle of poverty. Children also compete in the job market with their parents. Child labor is cheaper than labor of adults. This won't provide parents a chance to earn a viable income and send their children to school. By banning child labor, we give adults and children the chance to struggle out of poverty."
What are we going to do?
In this challenge you will first discuss and explore in your group what 'good education and free time' means to you. You can share the outcome of those conversations on your own school page.
Then we start with the assignments, in this challenge there are four. You can choose for one or more assignments, or divide them over the groups in your class.
How do we face this challenge and what do we need?
In this challenge several articles of the Convention on Children's Rights are discussed; about the right to (good) education, time to play and protection against child labor.
Step 1 - A conversation
We mention some articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to ensure that children can learn and should be able to play safely and have a childhood.
Article 28: Every child has the right to education. That means you can go to school to learn together.
Article 31: Every child has the right to leisure and play. Time in which you can decide for yourself what you want to do.
Article 32: Every child has the right to protection against child labor.
Also in this challenge you'll find a page with reflective questions for each of the articlesthat you can easily download and print.
Ask the questions in small groups, or use them for a debate with the whole class. This way you'll start a conversation and hear from each other what the right to learn and play means to you.
Please share the results of these conversations on your own school page. Do this with a text, pictures, a poster, a mindmap or in your own way.
Step 2 - Choose one or more of the assignments
After the conversation, we will start with the assignments.
With your class, you can choose to do one or more of the assignments OR you will each choose an assignment within small groups. The assignments are the following:
Design your own school or learning environment
Research - Check your belongings
From the life of Mohamed Sidibay
No education in refugee camps?
Assignment 1 - Design your own school of learning environment.
You are part of a school. We are curious if you are really satisfied with your school and whether you like to go to school. If you could rate your school, what would it be? Is this rating based on the building, the way you can learn there or just for the place, which is fine and safe to be?
Before you start designing, we ask you to show us what is special about your own school. Can you explain with a picture or drawing what the nicest place in your school is and why?
Imagine you can design a whole new school: What would that school look like? How would you organize and decorate the building and how can you best learn, play and meet each other?
Maybe this drawing can inspire you:
or this one?
We would like you to answer the following questions before you start designing:
What makes you want to learn something new?
Where did you learn something to remember?
Should your teacher explain to you what you need to know for the future, or do you learn to make choices in school, to learn HOW you learn best?
Do you decide yourself WHAT you learn, HOW you learn and WHEN?
What are the conditions for learning in a way that suits you best?
Can you become who you are at school?
Design your own school: how do you proceed?
Ask yourself this question: "How could my school or classroom look like in 2020?"
Please also use the answers to the questions above.
You now have the opportunity to show how your ideal school looks like and how you can learn at this school:
Make a plan, divide the tasks.
Create and design your ideal school with a drawing or paper model with a description of the way of learning.
It may also be a collection of ideas.
One step further? Present your plan not only on your school page, but also have a conversation with the management or leaders of your school about your proposals for change.
Assignment 2 - Research - Check your belongings.
Check your gear! Look closely at the stuff you have.
Your shoes, T-shirt, cell phone ... do you know where they come from and who produced them?
In other words: Do you know how 'cool' your stuff actually is?
When you buy products in a store, it's sometimes hard to see who made them. Maybe children made your clothes, shoes or toys. Did they harvest the cocoa and hazelnuts for your chocolate?
It is important to know who made the products that you want to buy, so you can make your own choice in what to buy.
To inform you, as a consumer, companies can contribute to the fight against child labour!
No child labour in this world...
How can you help to reach that goal? By not buying these things?
The result will be that those children have no work, so no food and no alternative.
Is there another way that works?
Yes, there are many organizations that are committed to 'Child Labour Free Zones’.
These are villages or areas where child labour no longer exists and where everyone works together to make it possible for children to go to school and improve the education. The standard of governments, employers, parents and children themselves have changed:
A change from ‘child labour is a necessary evil’ to ‘child labour is unacceptable’.
Take a look at this video:
How do you proceed?
You can think of all kinds of things, but there's only one way to really find out; by researching yourself to find out what the truth is behind all the stuff you buy!
Because you can make a difference:
Find a company in your area that uses or sells products from abroad.
Investigate how this company informs you as a consumer about the amount of child labour used.
Research the company to find out where their goods are manufactured and are they from places where child labour might exist?
You can visit the company and do an interview or search for online information.
Does the company take measures to combat child labour in their production lines? If so: how and what?
Does the company experiences difficulties in combating child labour? If so what are they?
Which other questions would you like to ask?
Choose a way to share in this wiki what you've discovered in your research.
Assignment 3 - From the life of Mohamed Sidibay
"I grew up in a world where justice and fairness were hidden by the barrel of my AK-47 that stood taller than I was. When the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) arrived, the entire town was in complete chaos. I stood by the mango tree and began to cry, calling out to my parents. While older children bumped into me as they fled the gunshots, I ran in the opposite direction towards the sounds, towards home. As I got closer to my house, I could hear the voices of the men with guns screaming and ordering people to stop running while they continued to shoot. The RUF had managed to gather those who could not escape, including my parents. I have wondered since if my parents stayed because I was not at home. They killed my parents in front of me. The rest of us were deemed the survivors for that day as we would be their slaves.The rebels had lifeless faces, dried lips, bloodshot eyes, and raspy voices, and they could no longer smile; what made them smile was what made them human, and what made them human was long gone. The smile on my face, too, had disappeared. The fires destroyed my home, reducing my childhood memories to ashes and carrying them away in the smoke.Not long after my abduction, I tried to run away only to be recaptured. As punishment and as an example of other would-be escapees, I was beaten with the back end of an AK-47, my front tooth was violently dislodged, and lit plastic was dripped onto my skin. Left for dead, I survived.
After four years of captivity with the rebels, I was released with the help of an Italian priest. Then the unexpected happened: I was given the chance to attend school for the first time at age ten by strangers who had nothing to gain by giving me a chance. In my state of homelessness and hunger, I soon understood the power of education. Within the walls of my school, I was taught to think with a pen in my hand instead of a riffle.
I want you to move beyond the story I have just written and I want you to join me in imagining the future of two kids":
Daniel Daniel is 10 years old and lives in the slum. He lost his family in a war. Daniel was bounced from one youth home to another until he finally found himself on the street uneducated, orphaned and homeless. Despite all this, he still believes in education. Daniel is a scholarship student at a very good private school. He wakes up ever morning and walk 5 miles to school on foot. He goes to school hungry, and leaves school hungry. He studies under candlelight every night on the beach. If he is lucky, he will eat a meal per day and if he is not, then he will have to settle for plain bread and sugar water or go to bed hungry and hope for a better day. But Daniel kept going for as long as he could.
Alex Alex is 10 years old and lives in a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house with his family in a nice neighborhood 15 minutes away from Daniel. Alex attends the same school as Daniel-but he is driven to school every morning by one of his parents. He eats breakfast every morning before leaving for school and always have food waiting for him back at home after school. Family dinner is sometimes mandatory for him even if he is not hungry. His learning continues outside of the classroom with his family. "Although Alex and Daniel attend the same school, they do not know each other and they will never meet. I want you to imagine these two kids..."
How do you proceed?
Please try to answer these questions:
Tell me who do you think will most likely succeed in life?
Describe what ‘success in life’ means to you personally?
Which of these two individuals will you like to be and why?
Which of the two is more likely to have a better sense of the world?
And if could either one of these two kids, which would you like to meet and why?
What would you say to Alex?
What would you learn from both of their experiences?
Discuss the questions in your own group. Present your answers in a creative way (report, video, rap etc..) on your school page. OR: Write a letter to Mohamed Sidibay, including your answers and questions to him, and post it on your school page. Mohamed will respond to you in a video conference (date follows)
Assignment 4 - No education for children in refugee camps?
Double bad luck
Abandon your house and land
because it is no longer safe
and then end up
in a strange place
where you can not go to school ....
Ahmed (14) and Mahmoud (15) are working in the dump.
The boys fled from Syria and must work in Turkey in order to survive.
They are dirty from head to toe, but they are laughing and have tough talk.
"This morning we didn't have a hot shower," Ahmed says.
"You liar", Mahmoud says. "We do not even have a shower."
UNICEF News, By Kusali Kubwalo
For Syrian children living as refugees in Jordan, drop-in centres are helping to provide education and psychosocial support for those who have missed out on learning, including many like Ahmed, who has had to choose work over school.
ZA’ATARI, Jordan, 15 July 2015 – Sporting a bright yellow jersey and a wide grin, Ahmed* greets us at the football field outside the drop-in centre in Za’atari camp. He has just scored a goal and his team is ecstatic.
Ahmed, 13, fled his Syrian homeland
with his family two years ago,
but had to choose work over returning to school.
Ahmed has been out of formal school for three years. Back home in Da’ra, Syria, he dropped out of school because it was too dangerous to leave the house. When he arrived with his family in Za’atari refugee camp two years ago, Ahmed realized he would not be able to rejoin school as he had hoped.
“My brother and I got jobs selling cigarettes, because we needed to support our family. I had no choice,” Ahmed says.
Their father stayed behind in Syria, and the two brothers had to shoulder the responsibility of supporting their elderly mother and two sisters. They worked about 12 hours a day.
Lately, Ahmed has cut down to working a six-hour evening shift and spends some of his free time at a UNICEF-supported drop-in centre in the camp. He wants to invest his time in learning a trade. He is not sure yet what trade to pursue, but he knows he must learn something useful and practical to earn money.
In partnership with Save the Children International, UNICEF supports three such drop-in centres in Za’atari camp, where children can get literacy and numeracy skills, learn a trade or just play and have fun. Around 80 children, many of them working children, visit the centres every day, at all sorts of times.
“I feel happy here,” Ahmed says. “At this place, I can have fun, and every day I learn so much. The math I learn here also helps me with my work.”
Children from Syria attending 'school' in a refugee camp in Suruc in Turkye.
Now start your own research on lack of education and child labor in refugee camps.
There are many sites with information about this distressing situations. Fortunately there are many people and many organizations which offer all possible help to the children who have fled. To give them some new hope, a dream, a future ...
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