In recognition of the historic 18th Birthday of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), we have assembled a human rights education media environment to help introduce the CRC to learners. Our intended audience is young adults, middle school through early college. The components include an interactive workshop on the CRC which can be easily facilitated in a single class period, background information on the Convention, the text of the CRC including a shortened child-friendly version, an essay by the creator of the workshop on how it was designed and an actual application of the activities with students, a multi-media visual essay using the photographic archives of Magnum Photos.

In educational settings, the CRC standards lend themselves to several possibilities. We envision that the workshop A Perfect Summer Day can be used with many curricular themes ranging from history to social studies to language arts classes. The workshop activities build on childhood memories to envision a common set of childhood essentials which are then used to draft out a set of universal guidelines which are compared to the Convention itself. Our intention is to suggest that the international standards of human rights are not something heavy and intimidating, but something born out of our own experiences. In order to claim human rights, we must realize that we are part of their construction. The visual multi-media slideshow further highlights an approach to the standards from an affirmative perspective emphasizing human dignity and integrity which are the conceptual core of all human
rights standards.

Photo credit: Rene Burri / MAGNUM PHOTOS