World Children’s Day

That is something we want to appreciate more. World Children’s Day is Friday 20 November and it allows the student community to fulfil the principal purpose of the event - to promote awareness among children worldwide, to achieve international unity and to offer each of us a unique opportunity to advocate, promote and celebrate children's rights; inspiring us to translate our beliefs into actions that will allow us to build a better world for children.

But before we can get children to stand up for their rights, they have to know what they even are. Apart from the well-known ones like food, education and safe shelter, they include the right to identity or to have your views taken seriously. The Charity Committee has already been running form time sessions in the Secondary School to familiarise students with all the different rights that children have. After all, Article 42 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) outlines that everyone should have the right to learn about children’s rights.

Apart from that, the Charity Committee has organised all kinds of activities to let students have some fun on the way as they learn. For Secondary students, we have organised a Murder Mystery Game, whereby players need to try to kill five victims assigned to them… before they are killed themselves. We are also challenging students to ‘Guess the Number of Hershey Kisses in the Jar’, with the chance of winning the whole container. We are charging small sums of money for participation in these games to support the incredibly important work done by UNICEF for the enforcement of children’s rights.

In the Primary School, we encouraged students to take part in a poster challenge, which involved colouring in a poster template for World Children’s Day. The most successful artists will be rewarded by seeing their work hung up in the school’s corridors. We have also created a large collection of resources that teachers can share with their students on World Children’s Day to let them know about UNICEF’s work - what children’s rights are and what we can do to help them secure what they are entitled to. Finally, Primary students will also be involved in a ‘Guess the Number of Sweets’ challenge.

Who is UNICEF?

UNICEF stands for ‘United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund’ and is an important part of the United Nations. The organisation works in the world’s toughest places to help the most disadvantaged children and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere. UNICEF’s aims are to provide safe water and sanitation, child health and nutrition, vaccines against diseases, treatment for mothers and babies and the protection of children from violence – in short, everything a child needs to live a healthy and fulfilled life.

But UNICEF cannot continue the incredible work that it does without adequate resources. So, we are asking the whole school community to make small contributions that will add up to make a big difference. If you pay money to participate in events such as our Murder Mystery game or the ‘Guess the Number of Hershey Kisses in the Jar’ challenge, it will be collected and donated to UNICEF, who will use it to make changes in parts of the world where help is needed.

We sincerely hope that everyone will enjoy themselves at this important and inspirational event – one that will allow us to learn about our rights and celebrate how far we have come, but also to appreciate how much more there is left to do.