Nicaraguan Children's
Right to Play Campaign
February 2010 Update
Since our last update a third children's action-research group has been formed in the Tuma La Dalia district,
made up of 24 boys and girls aged 8 to 13, supported by nine young Promotores/as (community education volunteers),
from four rural communities. This makes a total of 66 children and 21 teenagers now involved in the three action groups.
The La Dalia group has researched children's play in their communities, including interviews with their
grandparents about how things have changed. According to the elders, play, especially boys' play, was rougher
and tougher in the old days, and shop-bought toys were unknown. What hasn't changed is that parents still tell their
children to find some useful work to do instead of wasting their time playing.
This group has just completed their final report, and early in the New Year will present their findings, first in
their home villages and then to the Municipal Children's Committee in La Dalia town.
The Samulali and Yasica Sur action groups are moving ahead too. A donation from Common Threads in the UK enabled
the production of four giant campaign banners based on the children's designs. These have just come from the workshop,
and will be going up in the main streets and village roads in the next few days. The banners read "Children and Young
People Defending our Right to Play, for health, education, development, happiness, and a life without violence".
Although it's early days yet, the children's campaign is starting to attract national attention. The Samulali
action group have written the lead article in the current issue of Nicaragua's children's rights magazine "Arco Iris"
(Rainbow), where they offer this wonderful summing-up of why they consider play is important:
"1. For rest, relaxation and recreation.
2. To have fun and feel good, with joy and excitement.
3. For healthy development, and the growth of our body and mind.
4. For physical and emotional health.
5. For our creativity and imagination: to create, invent and dream.
6. To be able to communicate and share with confidence and not feel shy.
7. To experiment, learn and develop new skills.
8. To relate to one another with friendship, equality and respect: boys and girls, big and small.
9. To have a space for ourselves where our opinion matters.
10. And because it is our right: We must defend it and make it a reality."
In the New Year we want to hold a regional gathering for the three action groups to share their experiences and
start organising the national campaign. This implies more costs, so we are still counting on Playwords readers' support
(this means you) to take the campaign to the next stage.
August 2009 Update
There's been a lot happening since our last update. Both children's action groups completed their initial research.
Among their findings were:
 They listed all the traditional children's games known in their communities, including some that the old people remembered that are not played any more. They plan to follow this up by recording the games with their traditional rhymes and songs, especially those in danger of extinction.
They explored the different factors that prevent children enjoying their right to play. The Samulali group focused on sex discrimination:
"Our parents believe that boys have more rights, and they give them more freedom than the girls. Parents tell girls, 'Go and find a job to do, and don't be playing'. Also women take on more responsibility in the house. In many houses the girls look after their young brothers and sisters while the boys play. This is unfair because we are all equal and we all have the same rights."
The Yasica Sur group, many of whom live on coffee plantations, focused on the problems facing working children:
"A lot of kids work on farms and plantations and they come home worn out, so they don't get to play. At harvest time the kids work all day and there's no time to play".
Both groups first presented their reports in community meetings in their own villages. On Santa Martha coffee
plantation this coincided with the visit of a delegation of young people from Fermanagh Youth Council in Northern Ireland,
who were impressed at how the children had planned and carried out their own research
Subsequently both groups were invited to present their reports to the Municipal Children and Youth Committees in
their districts. On hearing the children's presentation, both Committees agreed that the right to play should form part
of their future agenda. They also agreed that if the children design banners for their campaign, they will arrange to have them put up in the main streets of both Matagalpa and San Ramon. What excited the children most, though, was the Matagalpa Police Chief's offer of a donation of sports equipment to their group.
Playwords readers may be aware that
the International Play Association: Promoting the Child's Right to Play (IPA) is currently producing a global position
paper on the right to play. The Samulali children's report was submitted to IPA as an input to this process, and the
kids were proud to see themselves acknowledged as part of the project's International Resource group. They're now
waiting for the Spanish version, so they can produce their own child-friendly version. The English version of the
PowerPoint presentation of the Samulali children's action group's report - as submitted to IPA - is available to
download here.
We will have another update in the next Playwords. Meanwhile we are still counting on Playwords readers' support (this means you) to keep up the momentum in our campaign. We now need to fund at least four banners, as well as posters and other materials, and we also plan to start a third action group in the Tuma-La Dalia district. If you've been following these updates in Playwords , you'll know that these kids mean business, but they are very poor, and without your support can't do much beyond the confines of their own village communities.
The Common Threads team has helped with some of the cost of banners for the Right to Play Campaign - please add your donations to get the next stage of the children's campaign up and running!
May 2009 Update
The "Defending the Right to Play" children's action group from Samulali met on 23 April to plan the first stage of the campaign. The group is made up of 16 girls and boys, aged 8 to 12, supported by teenage Promotores/as.
To start with we asked them why play is important, and they came with plenty of answers including the following:
"Because it's our right - and not just children, also big people"
"Because it makes us feel good"
"It helps us share and express our feelings"
"It helps us make friends and not be shy"
"It helps kids relate to older people and feel respected"
"It helps boys and girls relate to each other with respect"
"We learn to share games, because not everyone knows the same games".
And on the idea of a campaign to defend the right to play, they commented:
"They should give us the freedom and the confidence to play freely"
"A campaign is great because that way we'll get lots of people's opinions"
"It's not every day you have a campaign to defend the right to play!"
It was agreed that the first stage would be to research the current situation of children's play in their community, talking to other children and adult community members. They formed four research teams with specific topics to research:
The current state of play in the community: Where, when, how and with whom children play.
Is there discrimination against girls in relation to play opportunities? What
factors limit girls' exercise of their right to play?
What do old people remember about children's play in the community in times past? How has it changed?
What traditional games, rhymes and songs do children in our community know?
After another meeting to share their findings, they plan to call a public meeting to present their ideas to the whole community. CESESMA will help them produce their report, and make banners and posters based on their own slogans and drawings. The nest stage will be to take the campaign to the District Children and Youth Committee.
We will have another update in the next Playwords. Meanwhile CESESMA would like to thank ACLAIM in Dublin, who held a quiz night that raised £770 for the campaign. However, as we get to the district-wide, and then national campaigning stage, we want to turn the children's words and designs into banners, poster and badges, and this means increased costs, so if anybody still hasn't got round to making that donation you were thinking of, this would be a good time. See the main page for details on how to make a donation.
  
February 2009 Update
We kicked off the project on 30 January 2009 with a week-end workshop for our young promotores and promotoras. "Promotores" and "promotoras" are young volunteers (boys are "promotores" and girls are "promotoras") typically aged 12-18, who run out-of-school activity groups with younger children in their communities. These include arts and crafts, cultural and media activities, and organic farming. At the same time children learn about their rights and issues such as gender equality, prevention of violence and environmental protection. The training, development and support of these young activists is one of CESESMA's main work programmes.
The workshop focused on using games and creativity in informal education, and I took the opportunity to make a presentation about our Right to Play Project. Fifteen promotores/as immediately signed up (boys and girls, ages 15-19), and they will be the ones who take the lead in organising the children's action groups in their communities. We already have ideas about what the children's action groups will do, which include:
researching how, where, when and with whom children play in their communities: identifying the factors that encourage play and the obstacles that deny children their right to play
learning about Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
recording and photographing traditional games and play activities in their communities
interviewing old people about their memories of play in their childhoods
developing awareness-raising and campaign materials, aimed at both adults and children. These could include banners and posters, badges, radio messages, and collaboration with the children's theatre groups that CESESMA already supports in the area
preparing to become advocates for the right to play.
If you work on a play project in the UK and would like to have your kids link up in solidarity with ours, please drop me an email. It would be wonderful if each of our children's action groups could have a UK partner.
We will have another update in the next Playwords. Meanwhile the CESESMA team would like to say a big thank-you to the Common Threads team for their generous donation of £500 which got our appeal off to such a solid start; to the Playwords readers who have already supported our campaign with a donation, and to all those who are thinking of doing so, but haven't got around to it yet. What better time than right now? Please see the details here for information on how to make a donation.
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