Service Club Creates Picture Books on Rights of the Child
Students Amelia Colburn (left) and Ro Amador Fitzgerald (right) work on their picture book during tutorial.
Photo: Photo by Gabriel Shen
This year, Service Club and the Change Makers club are embarking on a new project to create picture books about the Rights of the Child. They are working with Ms. Maddy Wegner, who presented about the Rights of the Child to the Blake Middle School a few months ago. The entire middle school is contributing to a picture book, as well as individual students and pairs of students creating their own books. These books will be printed, and then sent to Reach Out And Read, a nationwide organization that gives books to children and their families at health check-ups.
“[I thought] it [would] be cool if children were developing books about these rights for other kids. So it was just kind of a, well, let’s see if this will go anywhere, idea,” says Wegner.
The Rights of the Child were originally stated in a legal treaty in 1989, called the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention has 54 articles, ranging from the right to express oneself to the protection from violence and exploitation. Since then, all of the UN member countries (other than the US) have adopted the convention as part of their laws.
Although the US has not officially adopted the convention, the city of Minneapolis has, and is designated as a child-safe city. Weger explains that Minneapolis “[tries] try to abide by those 54 articles in the convention.” Minneapolis is working with an advisory board of 6th youth, and has tried to incorporate youth voices in other aspects of decision making. “There is another effort that has to do with emergency preparedness and sort of involving young people and their families,” Wegner says.
At Blake, many students are working on creating books about these rights. Ro Amador Fitzgerald gives a summary of her and Amelia Colburn’s book, “There are hearts, and their hearts get broken because they don’t get their rights. And then they give back hearts.”
Right 42 states that everyone must know about child rights. These books do exactly that. Students make books that will then educate younger children about their rights.