CROC - Introduction Activities

In Sri Lanka, Priyanthi, a 28-year-old mother in the Matale District, remembers the evening that she carried her daughter, Madushika, 7 kilometres to the closest medical facility. It was about five in the late afternoon and almost dark when the small woman began her frightful journey with the 18-month-old toddler in her arms struggling for air. Stumbling over the fallen branches and underbrush cluttering the narrow dirt paths, she heard her daughter’s laborious gasps growing weaker. By 6 p.m., she and the baby reached the clinic.

The doctor’s words still haunt this woman with tired eyes and underscore her race against the clock. Had she delayed the trip by a mere 15 minutes, she remembers him saying, her baby, whose chest cold had turned into pneumonia, would have been dead. Had Madushika, now a healthy five-year-old, been born just a decade earlier, without the availability of life-saving drugs, the pneumonia would have likely won the race.

Priyanthi’s children, Madushika and her younger brother Madusha, have benefited from Sri Lanka’s system of health services and early childcare programmes. Both children were born in the relative safety of a hospital, like nearly 90 per cent of Sri Lankan live births today. When the young mother was pregnant with her two-year-old son, she received regular health check-ups in the village clinic and pregnancy advice from the village midwife. She learned how talking to her infant during breastfeeding would improve his mind and body. She learned that cooing and babbling to her child in response to his
sounds, commonly called ‘motherese’, would help the baby boy learn to talk.

State of the World's Children

Introductory activity

Simulation to introduce the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This simulation is based on an Aboriginal Studies role-play, The effects of the invasion on the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney area, developed by a lecturer at the Koori Centre, Sydney University.

BRIEFING:

This simulation should be used as a non-threatening activity enabling people to experience what hundreds of millions of children face every minute of every day for all of their lives.

It introduces the issue of human rights abuses.

Its aim is to teach about the effects of the loss of rights in a more personalised way than does looking at the information from afar. The simulation is an interpretation of real events from a variety of experiences that children face. It may need to be adapted to the groups you are dealing with; sensitivity is required.

It will raise many issues, and the issues raised will shock many who participate. It is important that the issues raised are discussed, so that there is understanding.

RESOURCES:

Print-out of children's rights activity cards
Print-out of story
A4 paper, coloured pencils or textas
Computers with Internet access

SIMULATION:

1. What are children's rights?

There are five synopses of children's rights supplied. These come from the pamphlet: the Convention of the Rights of the Child (It is a PDF, therefore requires Adobe Acrobat).

The civil rights and freedoms of children
Children's rights to special protection
Children's rights to education, leisure and cultural activities
The rights of children and their families
Children's rights to basic health and welfare

Print out each synopsis of children's rights.
Divide class into five groups based on each synopsis.
Each group is allocated Internet time to visit some or all of the following sites. Students may choose to find their own sites:

Child Labor
A school for Iqbal
They shoot children don't they?
Children and war
War Child
Stop the hate
Stop the slavery
Anti-slavery
Free the children
Protecting Children's rights
Case Study from UNICEF Australia

There is a more extensive list of Internet sites in the resource section.

Students make notes about children's rights, based on the Internet sites.

After the groups have visited the sites, hold a class discussion about what the students found out about rights.

2. Interpreting children's rights

Using the headings from their activity cards, each student is to draw, using pencils or textas or computer-generated graphics, an image representing her or his assigned right. Examples of images are on the cartoon section of UNICEF's Internet site.

3. Events impinging on children's rights

Once the drawings are complete, the students display them to the class and explain their meanings. The teacher then reads the story supplied. At each point in italics students are to rip strips off their drawings.

4. Points of discussion

How did the students feel as they ripped their drawings?
Why are rights important?

Based on the activity create a homepage called INTRODUCTION TO THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD.

Completed material should be posted on your school's web site.

Please supply the project officer with:

URL
school name
country
E-mail address
contact person
1-2 sentences about the work

If you have any problems in doing this, please contact the project officer.

Project officer e-mail: One.World@det.nsw.edu.au

Back to introduction page

Click here to register for the Convention on the Rights of the Child unit.

Other One World projects:

Other Human Rights Sites:

One world,
many democracies:
Human Rights

Explore your human rights
through Internet activities

International Human Rights Day
on ABC Online

Universal Rights Network

This unit of work is a joint venture between UNICEF Australia and the Curriculum Support Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Training.