Award-winning Early Years Council asked School District 72 to reinstate the Campbell River Children's Charter during the public school board meeting on April 29.
Anne Boyd and Brenda Wagman shared Campbell River was awarded the Janusz Korczak Medal for Children's Rights Advocacy due to the Early Year's Council developing the Campbell River Children's Charter in partnership with SD72 and the City of Campbell River.
"The medal is awarded by the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada in partnership with the BC Representative for Children and Youth," said Wagman. "It was first awarded in 2016 to Melanie Mark, the first fully Indigenous woman elected to the BC legislature. Her previous work included being an advocate for a number of years with the BC Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, and since that time, it has been awarded annually."
Five people from the Early Years Council accepted the award, the first time it was awarded to a community rather than an individual.
"When Brenda announced that we had won this award, I thought, "Oh, that's very nice." But I had no clue at all about this man and what he had done. I decided I should figure it out," said Boyd.
Dr. Korczak, born Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish Jewish pediatrician, educator and children's author based in Warsaw, Poland. He was the principal of an orphanage which the Nazis forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. He, along with students (around 200) and 12 staff members, were executed at the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942. The Polish resistance group, Zegota, offered Korczak sanctuary, which he refused to be with his students.
Korczak was also an early advocate for children's rights and drafted a children's constitution in 1919.
"His legacy and his advocacy for seeing children as equal members of society to be cherished continues to inform present-day approaches to working with children in all areas of their life," said Boyd.
Boyd said the medal acknowledges the whole body of the Early Years Council's work on behalf of the Campbell River Community, particularly the creation of the Campbell River Children's Charter.
Work on the charter started in 2014 and was signed in 2015.
"We did city council in Feb 2015, and we culminated with the signing of that charter at that time, and we worked closely with the school district throughout this journey. They were the ones we were dealing with school district children to get their input into this whole structure," said Boyd.
Wagman then asked SD72's board for two things. The first was to resurrect the charter in the community, which includes displaying the charter in SD72 facilities.
"The other is valuing children's voices once again by including young children's voices in the current update of the city's official community plan," she said. "In that regard, the city has developed an engagement plan for the update from Wood to Waves."
She then shared a quote from the mentioned engagement plan.
"Youth will be engaged at various stages throughout this project. The city will work with School District 72 to facilitate meaningful dialogue."
Boyd cut in and said they were going to hold the city to the quote.
Wagman presented to the city council last week and asked them if its collaboration with SD72 would consider including children starting from kindergarten in addition to youth. She said Early Years came away from the meeting thinking it was well received by the city. Early Years also offered up questions they could ask kindergarten and other students, such as "What do you like most about living in Campbell River?" and "What would you like to see improved?"
Trustee Joyce McMahon reminded the school district that they helped create the charter through two children's conferences held at the Sportsplex, primarily with children from Grades 4 to 6. McMahon said about 80 or 90 students were present and answered questions like the ones above.
"It was profound," she said. "It was really moving, and out of that, we created the charter. We took it back to them. Some of them said, "No, you don't have it quite right." So, we went back and continued to consult them, and then we promised we would come back to them when we had finalized it to get final approval, and we had a second children's conference of the same type. It was a very powerful experience that I think that is often overlooked in terms of the kind of insight children have."
