Under a 2009 school-wide theme of “Citizenship is everyone’s business” students and teachers at Nelson Central Primary School have been looking at various curriculum areas through a human rights lens. An inquiry by students in years 2-4 into children's rights has led to support for a Save the Children project in Sierra Leone.

In Term 3 the in Kahikatea Syndicate (a year 2 & 3 and 3 x 3 & 4 classes) chose to study Children’s Rights. The ideas behind it were:
1.    To compare how children’s rights are observed at Nelson Central School with those of other children school in a different place in the world.
2.    To show how we can build on the current situation.

When we were planning the topic we discovered the Save the Children Fund Kroo Bay website which provided us with a perfect resource to use as a contrast to Nelson Central School. We made contact with Save the Children Fund through the website and were given permission to use some of their photos.

The children researched how basic children’s rights were met (or not) in Kroo Bay and ultimately made movies to highlight the differences. 

We are now in the process of creating a Children’s Rights wiki to host these movies which will eventually link to both our school website and to the HRiE website. While this has not been completed some of the videos can be viewed here.

The movies were supposed to be the end of that topic but the children were so affected by what they had learned it seemed logical to take things a little further. Our next topic was about ways we express ourselves and our final task was to perform or present an item which expresses an idea or opinion. We saw the opportunity in this inquiry to add to the children’s learning in this area.

The children converted their knowledge into speeches which were then presented to members of the congregation from the church next door in an effort to persuade them to support Save the Children Fund. As a result the congregation were enthusiastic about doing this. The Samoan Tsunami changed arrangements with the congregation choosing to support fundraising efforts for Samoa because of the significant number of Samoan families connected with the church.

The children who made the speeches to the congregation also addressed our student council who agreed to get behind any fundraising efforts for Save the Children fund on the basis of what was presented to them.

The learning resulting from these topics was powerful in many ways but most significantly was powerful in terms of the increased awareness of human rights issues.

Sue McLean, Nelson Central School