Fundacion Telefon pa Hubentud (Telephone for the Youth in Papiamento) during a press conference informed the community regarding activities that they are organizing to celebrate the International Day of Children’s Rights on the 20th of November.
James Sneek, director of the foundation, explained that when children learn about rights, they learn that they have rights and other people also have rights, and that everyone needs to respect these. They also learn when a person has bad intentions towards them, how to stand for themselves.
Fundacion Telefon pa Hubentud this year will be celebrating its 23rd anniversary on the 20th of November. It was on this date when for the first time a child in Aruba picked up the phone and dialed 131 and received support and help from the foundation.
“Currently we are servicing not only Aruba, we also provide our services to children and young people in the islands of Sint Eustatius and Saba”, Sneek said.
This year is an important year for the foundation and they will be celebrating the International Day of Children’s Rights by organizing different activities regarding children’s rights directed at children, youths, parents and the entire family.
The first activity will take place on the 14th of November at The Movies Gloria, where the International School of Aruba will be in one of the rooms and will be watching different short movies together. Afterwards they will expand on the messages of children’s rights, which they will observe in the movies, and they will also hold a debate.
“This way we will give information to the actor, which is the youth in our community, regarding children’s rights, rights that they also need to respect in other children, and how they can stand up for themselves when a person has bad intentions to violate one of their rights”, Sneek commented.
Shurman Milliard, social worker for Telefon pa Hubentud, said that he is seeing a lot of interest regarding children’s rights. “Children’s rights is something that Telefon pa Hubentud has been promoting for 23 years, and currently we are even promoting these internationally. We want more children to be aware of this, and the first who can learn about this are the various foundations, but also parents and adults in general”, he said.
Milliard commented that in the same way parties are held to celebrate other dates, like Halloween and Carnaval, children’s rights also need to be celebrated with a party. This is the reason why Telefon pa Hubentud is organizing these activities, and will be hosting a big party.
On the 16th of November they will have activities at the Hilario Angela school. The school has been developing the topic of children’s rights and Telefon pa Hubentud wants to provide assistance. On that day they will have different activities for the children as well as the group of teachers. He announced that they will be giving information to the children regarding their rights, and for them to also know what they are celebrating. There are 54 different children’s rights, Milliard said, and the children will become more familiar with these.
The foundation is also speaking to primary school children. There will be different opportunities depending on their level for them to understand what their rights are. The smaller children will receive help from the Fundacion Hunga Teca, a foundation dedicated to children which focuses on play, and how children develop tools in their mental and motor system while they play. They will join this with the theme of children’s rights, where children from first and second grade will receive lessons from Hunga Teca. Children from fourth, fifth and sixth grade from the International School of Aruba will have cinema sessions to analyze children’s rights.
Afterwards, IBiSA will help in the aspect of movement, because they know that children playing and developing in sport is also one of their rights to develop the mental and physical aspect.
To conclude the day, they will have a musical with an international group that goes deep in providing information in a fun way for the children.
Aside from activities for the kids, Telefon pa Hubentud wants the entire community to become familiar with children’s rights during those days. For this reason, Kimberly de Cuba, social worker at the foundation, said that on the 18th of November they will be sharing information for parents through the television program “Nos Mainta” on TeleAruba. For the sixth consecutive year, this television program together with Telefon pa Hubentud reflects on children’s rights on the 20th of November.
They will bring together different foundations like Heart-Centered Leadership Foundation, Futura and Simia, to share together with Telefon pa Hubentud the importance of the opinion as well as the health of children.
Aside from help via telephone and e-mail that Telefon pa Hubentud gives to the children during the year, they also have different projects like Chic Chat where they approach the Center for Development of Women to take part in this project. This involves different episodes where they observe conversations between female youths aged 14 to 17 years, where they share the challenges they are confronting at that age.
During the program they have professionals present from Planned Parenthood and foundation against drugs FADA to answer questions and doubts expressed by the girls. They also receive confessions from youths of Aruba anonymously. This program began on the 1st of November and will be broadcast on November 8,10,15, 17, 22 and 29, as well as december 6 and 13.
