Tuesday 13 June 2017

Edinburgh Youth Social Action Summit for JGHS Cluster P6 Pupils



We are tremendously excited about an upcoming return visit to Sciennes on Thursday 15th June from WE Movement, again kindly arranged for us by London based Schools Co-ordinators Harriet Morgan and Louis Sherman,

Speakers from WE Movement have visited Sciennes twice to work with current P7 pupils, providing a wealth of opportunities for our children to embrace pupil leadership. Thursday 15th June will mark a return visit from the charity, where Speaker and Facilitators will work with P6 pupils from James Gillespie's High School Cluster: Tollcross Primary, Taobh na Pairce, Preston Street Primary, Royal Mile Primary and 24 representatives from Sciennes P6 classes in an Edinburgh Youth Summit to promote social action.

We are delighted to welcome Jesse Mintz, Senior Writer based in Toronto, who will join us on the day.

P6 pupils will take part in a special assembly at 10am and then split into three groups for workshops.

The format of the workshops fits ideally with our aims to develop pupil-led social action as part of the Junior Award Scheme for Schools  and our participation in Unicef's Rights Respecting Schools programme:

Team Building/Issues Module – exploring prevalent issues in society, and globally to build confidence, identify leadership skills and also get pupils thinking about issues they care about.
Reflective Module - enabling pupils to think how they can use their skills for issues that are important to them.  
Action Planning - putting pen to paper to create a tangible action plan for children to develop and put into practice.

WE MOVEMENT
WE Movement - From ME to WE -  is an international charity and educational partner that believes in a world where all young people are free to achieve their fullest potential as change-makers. Over the last 20 years, Free The Children has grown into an international movement supporting youth empowerment through educational service-learning initiatives in North America and the United Kingdom, and a holistic and sustainable international development model. It is supported by the Queen's Trust, the UN, Virgin Atlantic and has many international supporters -  Malala, Desmond Tutu, Prince Harry, Oprah will give a flavour. Their model is 'children helping children' and they promote pupil leadership and taking action, here and abroad. The scheme began in Canada, initiated  by one of the CEOs when he was 12, and is a social enterprise endeavour. 

For more information about WE Movement visit their website.

The 'WE Movement' programme fits extremely well with our well established Junior Awards Scheme Scotland (JASS) programme in P6 and P7 where pupils are asked to take their own action to achieve a 'Me and My World' element. JASS is a children's version of The Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the idea for it actually came from Sciennes! It is now adopted throughout Edinburgh and beyond so has been retitled Junior Award Scheme for Schools.

The Junior Award Scheme Schools (JASS) is an accredited learning programme, celebrating wider achievement, for young people (P6-S2). Sciennes and Tollcross Primary Schools have been implementing this scheme since we piloted it in 2009.
The concept emerged from a discussion during a Sciennes P7 visit to Lagganlia between Alice Brown, Gael Logan and Barry Hewitt who came up with the idea to set up a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style award scheme for upper primary pupils. The scheme has since been developed from a city wide, to UK wide to international programme.

There are three levels (bronze, silver and gold), each requiring a higher degree of commitment. Each level also includes four sections to be completed:
  • My interest - a hobby or interest
  • Get Active, Stay Active - involvement in a sport or physical activity
  • Me and My World - a community or environmental project
  • Adventure - a teamwork challenge through involvement in an outdoor activity (e.g Benmore and Lagganlia)
http://jassawardsciennes.blogspot.co.uk/

Sciennes helped develop an online version - eJASS.


WE Movement also fits well with our Unicef Rights Respecting Schools programme. We achieved Level One in May 2016 and our next steps are to continue to extend knowledge of UNCRC and to expand global citizenship. The WE Movement programme assists us with that. We have highlighted the relevance of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development since their launch in September 2015 and the programme also supports this extremely well.

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