The Children’s Rights workshops are an exploration of democracy and tolerance which will help children develop civic participation and social responsibility.
The participants take part drama activities and learn about main principles of tolerance and justice established by Polish-Jewish children’s author and educator Janusz Korczak, whose legacy became one of the inspirations behind the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Korczak was one of the first children’s rights advocates. He ran a democratic orphanage, set-up the first national children’s newspaper and campaigned for children’s rights.
The workshop is created and will be performed by Janusz Flakus, a workshop facilitator and theatre maker currently based in Cork. Janusz holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies and German (University College Cork) and FETAC Certificate in Theatre Performance (Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa).
The exhibition “Champion of the Child: Janusz Korczak” will be displayed in the Central Library from 14th 31st October. It is organized with the help of the Polish Irish Society.
The project is developed and funded by the Polish Embassy in Dublin.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
The rights of the child, as stated in the UN Convention, are one of the most important factors in early childhood education. The Convention is aimed at the child, as an individual, and includes all categories of human rights: civil, political, economic, social and cultural.The idea that the rights of the child are an aspect of democratic values can be traced back to the effects of war, and to pedagogical ideas about education. Janusz Korczak showed that wars and miserable social conditions tended to have an especially damaging effect on children. His ideas of the right of the child to love and respect have had a great influence on both educational and legal issues.
Janusz Korczak Biographical Note:
Dr. Janusz Korczak, a prominent Polish-Jewish pedagogue and paediatrician, refused during what is known as the Warsaw Ghetto operation in 1942, to abandon the children of the orphanage he worked in. Instead, he accompanied the children to the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka. Dignity of the child, children’s rights and children’s citizenship underlined the thinking of Janusz Korczak. This has become an important contribution to the Convention on the Rights of the Child proposed by Poland and adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1989.