Not their Battle: Speaking out Against Child Soldiers

Our school's namesake, Romeo Dallaire, is actively trying to eradicate the use of child soldiers. As a student council, we would like to create an awareness for and a genuine understanding of this sensitive issue in our school community.
We plan to do this in several ways:
- having a guest speaker (potentially a former child soldier) speak about their experience
- creating a series of lessons and activities for teachers to use in their classrooms to build background prior to speaker
- having an art contest where students submit an original piece speaking out about the horrors of child soldiers; winning piece will be professionally printed and shared with other schools in our region
- following the assembly, students will be invited to commit to speak out against children being used as soldiers
- members of neighbouring schools and local media will be invited to attend our event

Mise à jour (12 janvier 2011)

In the student activity council we are talking about child soilders. We are working with together to create awareness about child soldiers.
At this point, we are trying to get a speaker to come in from Unicef. We have some ideas of how to raise money for unicef. Here are the ideas:

- Poster contest
- Bracelets
- T-shirt contest
- Art contest

We are all assigned to look into the ideas. Each person will present an idea next week. We will decide which idea we like the best.

Mise à jour (23 février 2011)

We have booked Mariatu to speak at our school on March 23rd 2011. Mariatu was a victim of child soldiers - having her hands amputated by rebels in her homeland of Sierra Leone. We are partnering with UNICEF to make it happen - great thanks is being extended to Angeline R. for her support and awesome ideas.

We have ordered bracelets for students who support our action to wear. The bracelets say "TOYS NOT GUNS". We are hoping they will encourage conversation between students about the eradication of child soldiers from the world. Students who attend Mariatu's speech will be given the opportunity to sign the pledge and receive a bracelet.

Mise à jour (8 mars 2011)

We are getting ready for the big part of our project - On March 23rd Mariatu Kamara is coming to our school to speak to over 400 students about her struggles, her book, and how child soldiers stole her hands during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

Ten different schools from our board are coming to our school to see this event. Rogers TV is also coming to film the event - making it into a portion of their television show "In the Durham Region".

Mise à jour (5 avril 2011)

Mariatu's performance on March 23rd, 2011 was absolutely outstanding. Children from across Durham travelled to our school to hear her speak about her situation. It was a breathtaking performance.

Mise à jour (5 avril 2011)

Update re: projects

We are wrapping up our project now. We had said we would do the following:

- having a guest speaker (potentially a former child soldier) speak about their experience
(we could not find a child soldier, so Mariatu Kamara came to speak instead. She is a young woman who lost her hands when a child soldier cut them off).
- creating a series of lessons and activities for teachers to use in their classrooms to build background prior to speaker
(with the support of UNICEF a series of lessons were put into our library for teachers to use as resources)
- having an art contest where students submit an original piece speaking out about the horrors of child soldiers; winning piece will be professionally printed and shared with other schools in our region
(we did not end up doing this - there were other similar events going on at our school at that time and as a result this activity was considered to be repetitive).
- following the assembly, students will be invited to commit to speak out against children being used as soldiers
(all students who attend our school, and anyone who attended our assembly were given rubber bracelets with the message "Toys Not Guns" embossed onto them. This is a reminder for students that they should speak out against the use of child soldiers).
- members of neighbouring schools and local media will be invited to attend our event
(Rogers TV came and created a segment on their program "In our Community" about our event. SNAP Ajax and Ajax News Advertiser both came out to take photos and write stories about the event. The Durham Digest, the DDSB employee magazine, received an article and photos about our event. Ten area schools attended the event).