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Change agents on child rights told their stories

Last week some 60 people gathered in the conference room at Palaestra in Lund for the seminar ”Universities' role in sustainable change work” hosted by Lund University Commissioned Education, Child Rights Institute at Lund University and partners. The event marked the start of a new online global platform aiming to strengthen international collaboration and research focusing on child rights and also consolidate knowledge and disseminate the results of previous international training programmes (ITP) on child Rights, classroom and school management.

Between 2003 and 2016 the international training programme Child Rights, Classroom and School Management, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), helped train more than 800 change agents in 29 different countries.

The Child Rights Institute at Lund University is a research network bringing together researchers from various disciplines, including social work.

Last week's seminar focused on the story of the successful training programme and representatives from organisations including Sida, Barnfonden, SUS, Lund Municipality, Malmö University, and local schools, as well as representatives for national networks from 16 different countries, were invited to help tell the story.

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Christina Kafulo: Everyone is very interested and excited to be pioneers.
The training programme Child Rights, Classroom and School Management has been given 29 times over the course of the 13 years. Christina Kafulo from Zambia, was part of the 20th batch and talked at the seminar about her work with the SUHF* Conference which was held in Arusha 2015, promoting higher education for all. Christina also mentioned how she has continued to be involved in making change.

"And we will not stop there, we will keep looking at how we can continue working," she said.

Martha Amutenya trained in batch 21 in Namibia and talked about the sustainability and expansion of the programme in Namibia, and the training manual that has been developed with nine change agents as country mentors. She also talked about the enthusiam from the people involved.

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Martha Amuntenya with the training manual.
"Once a change agent, always a change agent," she said.

The change agents, coming from 16 countries, are professionals within the education sector and work for children’s rights in the following countries: Cambodia, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia. They spent the week in Lund attending the seminar to share experiences from the training programme and discuss and work on the online platform which will launch in 2018.

What is your impression of the seminar so far?

Christina Kafulo, Zambia:

"It is all going according to plan. And everyone is very interested and excited to be pioneers. We want to consolidate the training that we have had in child rights, classroom and school managment and to share best practise in our respective countries."

 

* SUHF is The Association of Swedish Higher Education