World Children’s Day 2022: Empowered Children Empowering Children

The date of 20th November marks the date the General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989; today it is known as World Children’s Day. This year, in line with Sustainable 

Development Goal 4, we focus on the importance of Quality Education for every child, ensuring that schools empower their students, provide them 

with a platform to express themselves and balance academic knowledge with essential life skills such as conflict resolution, critical thinking and personal and social wellbeing.

 

More than 60 years since the Declaration of the Rights of the Child was adopted, our children are growing up in a more uncertain world than ever, with global issues to tackle that threaten the stability of their future. It is more important than ever that we give them a seat at the table and empower them to make real change. 

 

This year BIS Students wanted to build on the UNICEF chosen theme of Quality Education and combine it with the UK’s Anti-Bullying Week to recognise that every child deserves the right to feel safe, secure and heard at school. With this aim in mind, the Global Goals Club launched “Reach Out Week”, a week long campaign culminating in World Children’s Day, to make every child feel heard and valued.

During the summer, Year 11 students Arisu Babakhani and Tim Nguyen attended the Virtual NAE-UNICEF Student Summit, a conference that brought them together with Nord Anglia students from around the world and challenged them to take action and raise awareness of issues that are important to them. During the summit they produced lessons to be delivered to students within school, and have since been collaborating with other NAE schools to share the amazing work happening across the world. 

 

From the summit, the concept of focusing on Goal 4: Quality Education was born, and Arisu, alongside the Global Goals Events Committee, has been developing activities and plans to help raise awareness of both the right to education and the right to be safe, alongside the other Articles of the UNCRC. Throughout the week, the Global Goals students led assemblies for every student in the school sharing the events and activities designed to make every child in our school feel valued and to make them aware of their rights. These culminated in a scavenger hunt on World Children’s Day that saw secondary students deciphering clues related to the UNCRC in order to find Uni, the UNICEF Mascot! Uni is a backpack character who represents the right of every child to quality education. Teams worked together to solve clues and race around the campus searching for Uni all while learning about the UNCRC and World Children’s Day. Similarly, across the primary campuses, children were tasked with finding Uni hidden throughout the school. This, coupled with lessons in the primary campuses across the week focused on the Global Goals, helped support children with their knowledge and awareness.