Our rights at CATS 2015
July 2014
by Luiza Shahbazyan & Liliya & Borislava (young people) from Safer Internet Centre
The is a recap of the lessons learnt from the team of the Safer Internet Center at CATS: Luiza, Lily and Boby. Because the conference takes the rights-based approach to empowering children and young people to transform society, we also follow this approach to present our experiences through the rights we enjoyed during the CATS week:
Our right to play
Celebrating Lily’s birthday in a castle made us feel like princesses in a fairytale. We had the chance to explore the castle and to gain knowledge about the history of Switzerland and also to open ourselves for the adventures coming. We could sense how the setting makes us more receptive to how other people feel, think and approach the issues that are important for us. We are really able to think out of the box and having people from over 30 nationalities really helps.
Lesson learnt: Beauty and scenery feed virtue and creativity.
Our right to showcase our work
We had a stand where we displayed some of the work our European network of Safer Internet Centres Insafe has done in enabling young people to support their peers to use Internet safely and responsibly. We talked with over 100 participants and found that there are many different people from all over the world who have the same aims as us and being together in fulfilling these aims makes us stronger. There were also some familiar faces from the Estonian and the Malta Safer Internet Centres.
Lesson learnt: Communication is the key to increase the support for our cause.
Our right to share our story
We took part in an activity called Human library where each of us presented the story we believed had made us stronger, real change makers. By being part of this activity we realised that we can inspire others to follow our ideas in their own country and to spread out what they have learnt from us. What is more, Boby was selected to present the story of her participation in CATS in front of the European Parliament, so that our voice is heard by the people with power to decide.
Lesson learnt: Each story is important and there are people out there who are interested in “reading” it, so you should be brave enough to speak up.
Our right to propose our vision
We participated in designing a child’s rights timeline where each country pointed the years of the major steps taken to protect and promote the rights of the children. It was very interesting to realise how many commonalities we share with other countries from the region and how we share common vision for the better future for kids.
Lesson learnt: Many countries struggle but we have to have strict deadlines to eradicate all forms of child rights violations.
Our right to offer solutions
We looked through common dilemmas that occur when trying to promote the rights of the children. For instance, sometimes empowering children to participate backfires because other adults feel that their authority is challenged. It seems that all children have common fears no matter where they are from. This means that there is still that to improve in working with them. Many young people shared their stories and we were showed how brave they are but despite that more supportive adults are needed.
Lesson learnt: Realising child rights is not easy, but together we can find the solution.