Teaching kids about their rights
ALLIANZ Malaysia celebrated Universal Children’s Day with a total of 100 primary school pupils with a fun, interactive session centred on the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC).
Seventy Years One to Six pupils from SK Yaacob Latif 2 and 30 Year Five pupils from Dignity for Children Foundation participated in two separate events respectively.
“This year, for Universal Children’s Day we wanted to do something different and teach pupils about the importance of children’s rights.
“Universal Children’s Day is a day to remind children that no matter how young, each and every one of them has rights to welfare, education, healthcare, civil rights and freedom from discrimination just like everyone else in this world.
“It is important to us that we encourage our younger generation to be bold, broad-minded and socially-aware individuals,” said Allianz Malaysia Berhad Allianz4Good head Ng Siew Gek.
In each session, pupils took part
in three activities which involved learning and understanding the UN CRC.
The activities included a “Right’s Web” where pupils worked together to form a spider web using balls
of yarn. The activity aimed to show the children the importance of working together, as the effect of dropping a section of yarn would weaken the web, much like how denying one child their right
would affect the rights of all children.
Besides that, the children also worked in groups to identify and differentiate between their everyday needs and wants. The children came up with lists of basic requirements for every child to live a happy and healthy life which aligned with their rights as protected within the UN CRC.
Pupils from Dignity for Children Foundation further explored the topic of needs and wants through Allianz4Good’s financial literacy programme, My Finance Coach.
Each session ended with a group mural made from paper cut-outs of each participant’s hands.
The pupils also wrote a “right” and a corresponding “responsibility” on each hand cut-out (for example: “I have the right to be respected [right hand], therefore I have a responsibility to respect others [left hand]”).
Universal Children’s Day was established in 1954 and is celebrated annually on Nov 20 to encourage international togetherness, raise awareness on children’s rights and improve their welfare globally.