ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: Rights of the Child

  • Call for NAME conference proposals: Empowering children and youth

    The theme for the 2010 NAME (National Association for Multicultural Education) conference is “Empowering Children and Youth: Equity, Multiculturally Responsive Teaching and Achievement Gaps”. The international conference runs from Nov 4-6, 2010 in Las Vegas NV.
    Deadline is April 17, 2010. For more information and to access the online submission form, see the conference website.

  • Toronto's Hot Docs festival offerings on multiculturalism, integration, equity, racism & child rights

    Among the showings at Toronto’s annual Hot Docs film festival, running from April 29-May 9, 2010 are:

    In the Name of the Family ~ about Aqsa Parvez and her so-called honour killing
    Listen to This ~ Pianist Thompson Egbo-Egbo starts a music program at his former school in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community
    Babies ~ just babies in settings around the world (also see film website)
    Grace, Milly, Lucy … Child Soldiers ~ the lives of Ugandan child soldiers
    The Day I Will Never Forget ~ about female genital mutilation in Kenya
    Made in India ~ about tourist surrogacy and the reproductive industry in developing countries.

  • Newcomer Children Information Exchange – new website

    The Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies of BC (AMSSA) has launched a new website to provide information related to newcomer children. The site Newcomer Children Information Exchange includes information, resources and other items of interest in several areas:

    • Early Childhood Education
    • English as a Second Language
    • Family Dynamics
    • Health and Wellness
    • Multiculturalism and Identity
    • Adaptation and Integration
    • Schooling
    • Socio-Economics

    immigrantchildren.ca welcomes this new presence in cyberspace that addresses the specific and unique needs of immigrant, refugee – all newcomer – children.
    The site also features:
    • A searchable database of useful research reports, educational materials, and web links
    • Theme pages that provide a general overview of key issues affecting newcomer children
    • The eventual home (and archive) of the ANCIE e-newsletter.

  • Call for nominations: Children's Peace Prize 2010

    The KidsRights Foundation annually awards the Children’s Peace Prize to a child “whose courageous or otherwise extraordinary efforts have made an impact on behalf of the rights of the child”.
    Former award winners include AIDS activist Nkosi Johnson, South Africa, “slave” Om Prakash Gurjar, India, peace activist Mayra Avellar Neves, Brazil.
    The Children’s Peace Prize includes prize money, which will be invested by KidsRights in specific projects related to the struggle for peace and interests of the winner.
    Do you know a child who works on behalf of the rights of children? Deadline for nominations in April 1, 2010.

  • Dec 10th is International Human Rights Day

    The United Nations website on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

  • Defining cultural competence in early learning settings

    It is increasingly being recognized that practitioners and evaluators using Quality Rating Improvement Services (QRIS) in early child development settings, must address the growing diversity of the families and children served in these settings.
    The US-based National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has created the Quality Benchmark for Cultural Competence Project (QBCCP) in order to develop a tool to assess the level of competence in programs participating in a QRIS. Driving the process was the fundamental belief that “for the optimal development and learning of all children, educators must accept the legitimacy of children’s home langauge, respect … the home culture, and promote and encourage the active involvement and support of all families, including the extended and nontraditional family units” (NAEYC 1995, 2).
    Eight concepts of cultural competenece:

    1. Acknowledge that children are nested in families and communities with unique strengths. Recognize and mitigate the tension between the early childhood profession’s perceptions of the child as the center of the work versus the family as the center of the work.
    2. Build on and identify the strengths and shared goals between the profession and families and recognize commonalities in order to meet these goals.
    3. Understand and authentically incorporate the traditions and history of the program participants and their impacts on child­ rearing practices.
    4. Actively support each child’s development within the family as complex and culturally­ driven ongoing experiences.
    5. Recognize and demonstrate awareness that individuals’ and institutions’ practices are embedded in culture.
    6. Ensure that decisions and policies regarding all aspects of a program embrace and respect participants’ language, values, attitudes, beliefs and approaches to learning.
    7. Ensure that policies and practices build upon the home languages and dialects of the children, families and staff in programs and support the preservation of home languages.

    For more information, visit the NAEYC website.

  • EU study on traditional harmful practices

    The European Union has commissioned a study to investigate traditional harmful practices. From the website harmfulpractices.org, this description of the study:

    “The Study aims at providing assistance to the European Union in defining and harmonising its action to end Harmful Traditional Practices, based on proven actions in Europe and elsewhere in both policy and practice. The Study shall, in particular, break new ground for the EU and provide concrete paths forward in relation to both harmonisation of legislation and policy and action at grassroots and governmental levels.

    “For the purpose of this Study, harmful traditional practices will include: female genital mutilation/cutting; honour-related violence including so-called honour killings; forced marriage; force feeding or starvation for cosmetic purposes; other violent and coercive acts justified on the grounds of tradition, culture or religion that harm the well-being of those who are victims of them, with particular attention to the impact on women and girls”.

    The study will examine legislation in all 27 member states of the EU, look at case studies of successful and unsuccessful persecutions, and discuss and develop indicators and responses from civil society to harmful traditional practices.

    For more info, visit the study website.

  • Burka Barbie

    The National Post‘s Barbara Kay has reviewed the Burka Barbie and asks why the world’s most famous fashion doll is wearing a burka, a “symbol of oppression”. From the provocative article:

    “In the eyes of the majority who do consider both dolls and guns natural objects of play, however, there should be no moral distinction between Burka Barbie and a putative G.I. Joe figure in a suicide vest for essentially they both represent a medieval Islamist worldview that flies in the face of the West’s most cherished values: equality of men and women and respect for human life, including one’s own”.

    Read the column here.

  • Nov 20th is National Child Day

    Today is National Child Day (Canada) and International Children’s Day (International).
    Related post: 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

  • New citizenship guide for new Canadians

    The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism today released an updated guide to Canadian Citizenship. Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship.
    The launch of the “study guide” (last published in 1997) was held at the Terry Fox Centre, where Minister Kenney talked about inspiration, fortune and his vision for modern Canada. The announcement – and guide – provide a generous nod to Canada’s military history and major events (the 1997 edition skipped quite a bit of this, including Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, Dieppe). The guide also does not shy away from some shameful periods in Canada’s past, such as the residential schools for Aboriginal children, the Internment of Japanese Canadians and the Chinese Exclusion Act, but I was disappointed to not see mention of the home children.
    Canadian history must acknowledge the home children – some 100,000 children taken from their homeland and brought to our shores to serve labour needs that Canadians could not or would not take on (sound familiar?). A great many of these children were younger than 10 years old and lived lives of brutality. These children were not adopted in the sense of how we use the word today, but taken, often bought and treated as chattel.  I’ll be lobbying the Canadian Museum of Human Rights to include an exhibit on the home children. Who’s with me?