Today is #GivingTuesday! On this day of celebrating generosity, I invite you to give children around the world an education in human rights. Children like Premalatha:
“I have been denied my rights. But these rights are my birthright,” says Premalatha, a school girl in a village near Madurai in the Tamil Nadu region of southern India.
In her daily life, Premalatha encounters caste and gender-based discrimination. When she fetches water from a well, she and children from other “lower caste” or “Dalit” families are supposed to wait behind children from the “upper caste”. In school, Dalits are sometimes not allowed to eat with other children. In teashops, they may be served tea in coconut shells, while members of the upper caste drink from steel cups. At home, Premalatha — not her brothers — is expected to do all the chores. Until the introduction of human rights education in her school, teachers sometimes hit students with sticks.
Now that her school teaches human rights, Premalatha learns about the rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, the rights of the child, and the principles of non-discrimination and equality. Premalatha and her classmates know they can use the human rights framework to work with their teachers, families and community to change attitudes and help resolve and prevent human rights violations.
HREA supports partner human right schools that ensure children around the world know their rights and how to respect, protect and fulfill them. But we need your help. Please make a gift this #Giving Tuesday. Your tax-deductible donation will empower children around the world.