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| Sunday, 29 December 2002 |
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Children's Summit by Farah Macan Markar "I am your friend", Children's Summit was held for the first time in Sri Lanka from the 10th to the 16th December 2002 at the Vihara Maha Devi Park. Organised by Save the Children(SC), ZOA and the Association of Disabled and Ex-Service Personnel (ADEP), the programme had the participation of 150 children from various clubs of each of these organisations, most of them coming from war-affected areas. Lilani Wayragoda from SC says that this summit has given the children who are from various parts of the country a chance to get together. Its theme being Respect, Understanding and Sharing. Lilani says "Sinhalese and Tamil children get together for various activities in this programme. It was a good chance for each side to get to know the other better, understand and respect their diferences, and realise they are all human beings." The programme had four groups, art, handwork, theatre and music. Each group had a mixture of Sinhalese and Tamil children, in which they had to participate in group activities, sing songs made in both languages, produce their own plays, dance, draw and make items. "This was our way of helping in the peace process. Through starting with the children, one of the first items we did was get out a huge map of Sri Lanka and get the children to mark where they live. This made them see where the other lived and realise that we all share one island". In its follow-up of Children's Summit the three organisations have prepared a draft for discussion, in which they hope to get the children to publish a newsletter among themselves, publish a summit report, help the children communicate with each other from club to club, through letters, meetings and other activities for the children to maintain a log book on their activities and impressions, have 6 children's consortiums up in various areas, hold children's summit 2003 in August in the North and have a peace billboard campaign. The cost of this year's campaign was about 7 lakhs, of which ADEP sponsored the most, by giving three lakhs fifty thousand. |
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