Last blog of 2007! A Summary of my Year with CRAE team. :)

My Last Blog of 2007,
Its a summary of the past year.

Since February 2007 I have been involved with the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) this has given me so many different amazing opportunities. I have attended 2 informed and influential training courses in London, which have given me knowledge about children’s rights, how to be informed and influential and how to become a children’s rights champion.

My work as a champion so far has included doing school assemblies, giving talks to young people, making and teaching lessons all about children’s rights, also I have done a mini Informed and Influential in my local area, which was a success so the next one is being planned for the end of January. As well as being a champion, I do other activities as part of CRAE, these include working on a project against age discrimination called “Equality for Children and Young people too!” I got involved with this by attending an event in London to put forward young peoples views about age discrimination in their local areas, there are a lot of young people who have been a victim of age discrimination, myself and 3 other young people formed the campaign team, we took the evidence from the event and the Report which the CRAE team had put together, to Westminster to present it to the Minister of Equality, she was really shocked by the findings, the group also spoke about the project at the CRAE AGM in November. Also I have become part of the Website and Communications team for the “Get Ready for Geneva” project, to carry out this role the team attended a training course in Leeds, where we learned a lot, we were taught how to make voice and video podcasts on the Radio waves website. I have also took part in some of the children’s rights investigations, I really enjoyed doing these because you get to meet lots of new and interesting young people from all walks of life. Promotion is a major part of our work, I have taken part in lots of children’s rights promotion events, like at the YoMo (young movers) event in October, I helped Krishna promote Get Ready for Geneva, also at an event in Greater London called breaking the chains with Carla, to promote children’s rights and Get Ready for Geneva. Recently I have also become a CRAE Trustee, which is a major role for anybody but especially as I am only 17 it is amazing, this role means that for the next 2 years I will sit with the other Trustees and make decisions about the running of the CRAE, its projects, the staff and much more! As Well as all the things I have already mentioned which I have achieved with the CRAE, they have also given me something else, the ability to stand up for what I believe in – my passions, also they have helped me to develop as an individual, enabling me to have a voice. When I look back to year 10 (when I was 14/15 years old) and see how shy and quiet I was and wouldn’t stand up for myself yet alone other people, and now look I am confident, I can be loud, I will stand up for all the other young people of my area. It is thanks to the CRAE team that I was able to make this transformation to an individual willing to stand up and fight for the children and young people across England. A lot more has happened over the past 9/10 months but these are just some of my many highlights, a summary of what has happened! I know there is a lot yet to happen; a new year brings new challenges but the same beliefs…

“Together we are one, Together we will make change happen!”

Happy New Year to all!

Laura aka Chasecat!

This article Last blog of 2007! A Summary of my Year with CRAE team. :), was posted on Saturday, December 29, 2007 by Laura-Liz