PROJECT “THE VOICE OF POVERTY”
PROJECT “THE VOICE OF POVERTY”
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MDG THROUGH HR LEARNING
Workshops and Meetings for reflection on children’s and adolescents’ human rights
From May to July, the Steering Committee was organizing several activities in order to diffuse the MDG, specially MDG number 1 “erradication of poverty” using the Human Rights framework and the methodology of participatory learning.
The principal beneficiaries of these activities were children and adolescents from slum areas and poor neighbourhoods.
Girls and boys discussed the connection between MDG and the Human Rights that they are entitled, contained in our National Constitution.
We started from the concept of poverty as the lack not only of monetary resources but also the lack of freedom, capacities, social connection and knowledge.
Girls and boys learnd which were their human rights; how to connect with public officials and how to establish a dialogue with them. They made their demands and they fixed a schedule in order to obten the satisfaction of the demands.
The idea of working on human rights education and especially on children’s and adolescents’ rights using the clown technique is grounded on the observation of the reality children and adolescents are engaged in, where “the world they live in” intertwines fantasy, dreams and imagination with reality itself.
That is the reason why we embarked in this experience considering this language to reflect on the different issues: identity, freedom of thought and expression, gender discrimination.
The aim of all the meetings was that boys and girls began to think about their own needs and rights, became aware of them, and were able to form their own opinions.
Number of workshops: 30 of 2 hours of duration each.
There were 3 schools that shared the proposal:
PROJECT “THE VOICE OF POVERTY”
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MDG THROUGH HR LEARNING
Workshops and Meetings for reflection on children’s and adolescents’ human rights
From May to July, the Steering Committee was organizing several activities in order to diffuse the MDG, specially MDG number 1 “erradication of poverty” using the Human Rights framework and the methodology of participatory learning.
The principal beneficiaries of these activities were children and adolescents from slum areas and poor neighbourhoods.
Girls and boys discussed the connection between MDG and the Human Rights that they are entitled, contained in our National Constitution.
We started from the concept of poverty as the lack not only of monetary resources but also the lack of freedom, capacities, social connection and knowledge.
Girls and boys learnd which were their human rights; how to connect with public officials and how to establish a dialogue with them. They made their demands and they fixed a schedule in order to obten the satisfaction of the demands.
The idea of working on human rights education and especially on children’s and adolescents’ rights using the clown technique is grounded on the observation of the reality children and adolescents are engaged in, where “the world they live in” intertwines fantasy, dreams and imagination with reality itself.
That is the reason why we embarked in this experience considering this language to reflect on the different issues: identity, freedom of thought and expression, gender discrimination.
The aim of all the meetings was that boys and girls began to think about their own needs and rights, became aware of them, and were able to form their own opinions.
Number of workshops: 30 of 2 hours of duration each.
There were 3 schools that shared the proposal:
“Itatí School N°1315” from Corrientes: 5th and 6th forms, morning and afternoon sessions.
Total of students: 82 (12 workshops)
“Rosa Ziperovich School” (bilingual school of the Qom indigenous community), 5th, 8th and 9th forms.
Total of students: 58 (10 workshops)
“San Miguel Arcángel School”: 8th and 9th forms.
Total of students: 84 (8 workshops)
Many of the children of the first two schools live in huts made of sheet metal and cardboard, with no hot water or bathrooms, and not enough beds for the number of people living in each hut.
According to one of the teachers, in the winter season sometimes just half of the students attend classes because in the cold winter nights it is extremely difficult for them to fall asleep early since it takes time to warm up, and therefore the following morning they cannot succeed in waking up to go to school.
In addition, they work in the garbage until the early hours of the morning as “cartoneros”, collecting cardboard and other materials they can later sell.
The first meetings proved to be a little thorny, particularly because children felt embarrassed when it came to do exercises and games involving gestures and the body, but this situation changed as time went by, and in the last meeting they even put up a play.
Both boys and girls participated equally. However, at the beginning it was the boys that expressed themselves more, and when the girls tried to voice their opinions, the boys played jokes on them, diminishing and undervaluing their female classmates. Finally, our intervention encouraged girls to extend their participation and have a say on the issue of human rights, especially on the relationships between genders and their differences.
In the case of the “San Miguel Arcángel School”, of a different social level, the needs arisen were related to the institutional functioning and the organizational dynamics (recesses, teachers’ manners, norms, uses and customs of the institution). As a result, 8th form put forward the initiative (developed in the second meeting with the issue of freedom of thought and expression) to get organized to draw up a request to the school authorities for a longer recess on the days with longer school hours.
We have realized that oral communication is rather daunting for children in general, but that enabling and facilitating other ways of expression beyond the oral one, that is to say drawing, writing, movements and gestures, stimulate children and make them feel comfortable to get their feelings over.
This experience has revealed that although contexts do have their specificities and in some cases basic needs are cruelly unsatisfied, there is a common denominator which identifies all boys and girls as such: the NEED-RIGHT to have spaces which allow them to express themselves in different ways as well as stimulate and promote their creativity.
As a result of the meetings, boys and girls drew up lists of demands and proposals in the form of letters and drawings which were formally delivered by themselves to the Human Rights Office of the Municipality of Rosario and to the Human Rights Department of the province of Santa Fe.
In both cases, they had the chance of talking with the officials in charge of these areas to manifest their needs, gaining the officials’ commitment to answer their requests.
At present we are in the monitoring stage of that commitment, to make sure that this exercise of citizenship performed by boys and girls ends up successfully a circuit that involved learning about human rights, recognizing their rights, requesting before authorities and obtaining answers to their demands.
“Itatí School N°1315” from Corrientes: 5th and 6th forms, morning and afternoon sessions.
Total of students: 82 (12 workshops)
“Rosa Ziperovich School” (bilingual school of the Qom indigenous community), 5th, 8th and 9th forms.
Total of students: 58 (10 workshops)
“San Miguel Arcángel School”: 8th and 9th forms.
Total of students: 84 (8 workshops)
Many of the children of the first two schools live in huts made of sheet metal and cardboard, with no hot water or bathrooms, and not enough beds for the number of people living in each hut.
According to one of the teachers, in the winter season sometimes just half of the students attend classes because in the cold winter nights it is extremely difficult for them to fall asleep early since it takes time to warm up, and therefore the following morning they cannot succeed in waking up to go to school.
In addition, they work in the garbage until the early hours of the morning as “cartoneros”, collecting cardboard and other materials they can later sell.
The first meetings proved to be a little thorny, particularly because children felt embarrassed when it came to do exercises and games involving gestures and the body, but this situation changed as time went by, and in the last meeting they even put up a play.
Both boys and girls participated equally. However, at the beginning it was the boys that expressed themselves more, and when the girls tried to voice their opinions, the boys played jokes on them, diminishing and undervaluing their female classmates. Finally, our intervention encouraged girls to extend their participation and have a say on the issue of human rights, especially on the relationships between genders and their differences.
In the case of the “San Miguel Arcángel School”, of a different social level, the needs arisen were related to the institutional functioning and the organizational dynamics (recesses, teachers’ manners, norms, uses and customs of the institution). As a result, 8th form put forward the initiative (developed in the second meeting with the issue of freedom of thought and expression) to get organized to draw up a request to the school authorities for a longer recess on the days with longer school hours.
We have realized that oral communication is rather daunting for children in general, but that enabling and facilitating other ways of expression beyond the oral one, that is to say drawing, writing, movements and gestures, stimulate children and make them feel comfortable to get their feelings over.
This experience has revealed that although contexts do have their specificities and in some cases basic needs are cruelly unsatisfied, there is a common denominator which identifies all boys and girls as such: the NEED-RIGHT to have spaces which allow them to express themselves in different ways as well as stimulate and promote their creativity.
As a result of the meetings, boys and girls drew up lists of demands and proposals in the form of letters and drawings which were formally delivered by themselves to the Human Rights Office of the Municipality of Rosario and to the Human Rights Department of the province of Santa Fe.
In both cases, they had the chance of talking with the officials in charge of these areas to manifest their needs, gaining the officials’ commitment to answer their requests.
At present we are in the monitoring stage of that commitment, to make sure that this exercise of citizenship performed by boys and girls ends up successfully a circuit that involved learning about human rights, recognizing their rights, requesting before authorities and obtaining answers to their demands.