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The children spent the night to prepare for the Children’s Presentation on Child Participation on the launching of the State of the World’s Children the next day.
Everyone went to Korea National Press Center where the Global launching of the States of the World’s Children ceremony was held. This event were attended by Korean officials including a Vice Minister and two Korean Unicef goodwill ambassador , a famous writer and a fashion designer.The press were invited to cover the ceremony and interview children delegates of the forum.
Our sleepless night to prepare for the event was worth.The children came to the ceremony as live model for child participation.They also hoped to build contacts,share their experience at the forum and lobby for child participation.Several speeches were given by Korean officials and several adults on the State of World Children 2003.After that, the presentation of children’s forum delegates on child participation was dilivered in a creative way through individual presentations on what “child participation “ meant and how it changed their lives,drama and sketches on the importance of child participation and current problems preventing child participation.The presentation ended with a message and an appeal from Korean children to their government to support child participation.Being awared of the audience and the fact that Korea was at election time ,the children concluded the presentation with the message :”A government that support child participation is the government of tomorrow”.The presentation received positive response and applause from the audience.However,surprisingly enough,when given time to interview us,no press had any question even though the children were all ready to answer any question.
In the afternoon, we had workshop 4 which dealed with regional planning and strategizing on follow-up actions. Mr.Victor Karunna and Mr.Jay Wisecaser from Unicef and Save the Children Alliance in Bangkok,who had been following Asian children through out this process from Beijing to New York to Seoul,updated us on information regarding present networks such as Asian Pacific youth network,child participation emailing list, Children As Partners Initiative and gave us information on upcoming events such as Ministerial Conference in Bali Indonesia.We gave back ideas on how to monitor and evaluate mechanisms to ensure constant and effective child participation in these events and proposed regional support requirements.We proposed to set up a regional networking where young people with previous experiences could help children to get invovled and shared skills in participation.We also proposed to write a letter which would be sent to all governments and Ngos to call for their support in having children delegates in their governmental delegation at all Ministerial Conferences from now on.
In the evening, we were invited to dinner hosted by administration of Seoul city. It was a great recognition and hostalbility that we all appreciated.Besides,the food was awesome and everyone enjoyed socializing and practising a couple of Korean words they just learnt a lot.
The whole day was spent on Children’s Country action plans and field trips.The Vietnam team broke up into 2 groups. Thu was building a children’s country plan whereas Lan Anh,Trang and Ha joined the Building regional network group.All these regional and country projects were again posted for the gallery walk tour.Through this session the delegates learnt to write a project proposal with SMART strategy (simple,managable,adjustable,realistic,time-bound).
The delegates were really enthusiastic about the networking project as they were told there was funding possibility from Unicef and Save the Children Alliance for this project if
it was SMART built.The networking group was broken into sub-group. While one group worked on the structure and framework of the network,the other dealed with a motto and promotional campaign for the network.After lengthy discussion,they settled for
for 'Voices Out, Voices In'.Basically, the motto encouraged a child to 'voice out' his or her opinions, while it was hoped that adults would let the same 'voice in', and understand or accept their views.The network would assist and support country members to lobby for child participation as well as watch dog the governments in implementation of NPAs.
Filed visits were programmed for the afternoon.Field visits were awesome experience and most enjoyed by many delegates. We had a tour around Angel’s heaven.This tour helped the delegates to study more about the history and activities of Angels’s heaven. Everyone was really touched too see all the pictures of the school and meet some students,volunteers and teachers.We were even more inspired by all the poetry books,ceramic art works done by these talented differently abled youth.After the Angel’s heaven tour,people were devided in three groups to visit Alternative School,Cultural center and Youth media center.Lan Anh was in the youth media team.She went to see the Seoul Youth Digital Media center- SSRO .It is non profit organization specialized in digital media education and is dedicated to teaching young people practical skills in media.It contributes to promotion of youth media activity and extension of media contents for and by youth.The whole group was warmly welcomed by young broadcasts.After the ‘cookies and doughnut’ session, the delegates asked staff at SSRO several questions.Following that was a short feature on the Children’s forum delegates on Internet broadcasting station of SSRO. So each of us got a chance to say what a world fit for children meant to us and our talks would be broadcast on ssro.net.Other groups went to alternative schools where the students built their individualized study programme and organized their own musical bands as part of their study. The group that went to cultural center were got involved in a programme where they used music and storytelling to share messages on life and their feelings toward children’s rights. Everyone learnt a great deal and appreciated the field trips which gave them more insights on the life of young people in Korea.It was also a good refreshment before coming back to work hard in conference room.
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Ha Thi Lan Anh
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