Overview of the 5 challenges: 1. Why Children's Rights? - 2. Autonomy & recognition - 3. The right to education - 4. Protection against Child labour - 5. Rights for girls & Equality

 
By students of Montessori College Arnhem

Hi there,

Nice to know that you chose to participate in our Learning Circle project. We hope you enjoy making the challenges we made for you and your fellow students.
Let's just start with introducing ourselves. We are Pleunie and Annemijn, 16 years old, and we live in the Netherlands. Our school is the 'Montessori College Arnhem', in the lovely green city Arnhem.

We both think Child’s Rights are very important because we think every child in every part of the world should have the same opportunities in their young lives.
To grow up in good health in a loving family, to have the chance to develop talents in a safe environment and be a happy, carefree child. And if it’s hard for a country to ensure their children’s rights, because of poverty or war, for example, the rest of the world can help them.

There are a lot of children’s rights that try to make sure all children have the same chances in life, to be precise 54.
That’s a lot, so we made the choice to pick one of them and tune into that just a little bit more: The protection of children against labour and exploitation.
Not every country is able to protect their children against child labour and exploitation.
In the Netherlands, you are not allowed to work until you’re 15 years old. When you’re fifteen you’re able to choose if you want to work, because you want to earn a little money of your own or choose not to work. Also, you can choose what you want to do, for example, work a couple of hours in a supermarket or deliver newspapers. It’s important not to let your side job prevent you from studying for school because that’s one of the opportunities that you’re having to develop as a human being, to learn and find out what it is you want to do when you grow up.

Our goal with this Learning Circle is to make you explore and become aware of your situation back home as it comes to these rights and how it’s done with the rights of children in foreign countries.
You will get to know students from other Montessori schools and their thoughts and findings on this topic. We wish you lots of fun working on the challenges, we’re very excited to see the results of your class/group work. 

Good luck, Pleunie & Annemijn

Assignment 1: Raise Awareness

In this first assignment, you are going to use your creative mindset to make a powerful poster on this subject.
First, let's explore this topic: protection against child labour and exploitation.

Take a look at this video and find more resources. We are sure you can find a lot more information!

Let's take a look at some posters made by other children. 

Can you draw or paint a colourful poster or design one on a computer or laptop?

Resource: pankhmnit.blogspot.nl

Assignment 2: Quizzzz. 

Right now you might have formed your own opinion on protection against Child Labour.

Now it's time to test the knowledge of other students on this topic and make them more aware:

We ask you come up with a set of questions and to design a quiz.

You can choose to make a quiz like a kind of test and discuss answers with your classmates.

You can also make a presentation and ask some questions afterwards. Again, you can discuss the answers with everyone.

Or you can make a quiz with kahoot.it or another website where you make questions and make up false answers and one answer that is correct (of course).

Or combine a couple of possibilities.

The goal of the Quizzz is to think of an interactive and fun way to make the students talk about the subject. 

Share your quiz and some results (pictures, the reaction of the students who made the tests, etc) on your school page.
Show us how your class/group did the quiz.

Assignment 3: 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.