During the week of 18-22 November 2019, we enjoyed a UNICEF week here at NAISR. Our Global Campus leader and UNICEF leads planned a number of activities for our school community, ensuring that we honoured World's Children's Day and to build awareness of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
As part of our UNICEF Week, UNICEF representatives visited our school on Monday 18 and Tuesday 19 November to speak to our students about their work as part of the UNICEF Student Team Rotterdam, what they do and how they do it. Our two guest speakers spoke with such passion about their work as volunteers for UNICEF and they inspired our middle school and high school students to take action and raise their voice for Children’s Rights.
Elementary students also kicked off the week with some fun, hands on activities, such as making World Children's Day posters and a big banner together, it was fun! During these activities, our younger students learned about The Rights of the Child and were thinking of all children around the world whose rights are not honoured and how blessed we are to have children's rights respected at NAISR.
On Wednesday, 20 November, to celebrate World Children's Day, the entrie school community dressed in blue and multiple activities were planned, including a visit to the (Y)our Rights Festival in Leiden.
Several student council members and staff attended the (Y)our Rights Festival organized by UNICEF in de Hooglandse Kerk in Leiden.
The festival was also held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and specifically that young people have had the right to be heard for 30 years. There were fun workshops on social innovation, rebellious behavior, motivation, prejudice, body language. Discussions on topics such as poverty & youth assistance, motivation, personal development and social media.
Young people can give their opinion, of course! Adults like that. But nobody tells you how you actually go about doing that. The (Y)our Rights Festival, in Leiden was all about young people collaborating with adults.
The aim of the festival is to create awareness in young people that they have a voice as well as rights, and to give them the opportunity to learn how they could use that voice to influence politicians, policymakers, actually all adults. That starts by talking together, therefore in every workshop you could see children interacting with adults.
“Overall, I think that this is a great opportunity to be able to come to this convention, and a great experience for students like myself.” -Meredith, Grade 8
“Overall I think this was a great opportunity to explore the different ways the rights of children protect and help those in need and influence their way of living. On another side, we also got the opportunity to explore how we can improve the situation and enforce these universal rights all around the world. It is an amazing experience to see so many passionate people taking about global issues of global importance and commenting their worries and solutions; as all of us are involved in this world, as parents, as children, as siblings and as friends. The main take away that I have gotten from this experience is to remember to talk about the issues and talk about the solutions we have, but also to act upon these issues; and most importantly not to forget that we have a voice, as children and as adults. These rights apply to every-one and anywhere in the world. We must not take them for granted, and we must help those in need who sill donʼt have these rights to achieve the full extent of them.” - Alex, Grade 11
“I really like the first workshop, which was design your own supermarket, because you get to make something and use your imagination. You also get to learn something while youʼre having a great time.” - Anshi, Grade 5
"My favorite workshop was designing the supermarket because you had a lot of materials to build with, so you had a lot of opportunities and options of designing the shop. I was proud of my group’s smartshopping cart.” - Kuba, Grade 5
We then closed the UNICEF week off at NAISR with secondary school students wokring together in the gym to reflect on children's rights by acknowledging the importance of having rights that protect them.
Watch our students in the video below as they stand up for the rights that belong to all children.
To read the full description (children's version) of each of the Rights of the Child, please visit the UNICEF website via the following link:
https://www.unicef.org/ch…/convention-text-childrens-version
