A Better Today for a Brighter Tomorrow As we step into a new decade, those who care about the future—about their children and about their children’s children—are taking stock of humanity’s trajectory. Building a better future starts by becoming a better human. We do so fuelled by the unblushing promises of God. For the God of the rainbow and the God of the cross is well able to perfect that which concerns us. COVID-19 was been declared a global pandemic in March of 2020. The virus is having both short-term and far-reaching implications for our families, friends and colleagues. It also has an impact on our work, and will affect the achievement of our shared vision of a world without violence against children. As the virus continues to spread across the world, we are all facing multiple new stresses, including physical and psychological health risks, school and business closures, family confinement, isolation and economic vulnerability. Through all of that, children are particularly vulnerable. Dark reality of Covid-19 children & youth No doubt, the effects of the pandemic are already taking a devastating toll on millions of people. But children and youth are especially vulnerable to the greater societal shifts being witnessed as a result of the virus. For example, as children around the world are being asked to learn remotely through digital tools, access to education has become challenging, making the stark digital divide in education more apparent. While laptops and iPads were once a pastime luxury, they are now an educational necessity that not all can afford. New data shows that half of the students out of school due to COVID-19 can’t access online learning and, according to UNESCO, nearly 830 million children don’t have access to a computer at home. The daily schools lunches are also now missing, which for many children was their key source of nutrition. While some children are safe and secure in their home environments, for others it’s a darker reality. Being confined at home puts some children at increased risk of domestic violence and other forms of abuse, including child trafficking, and online bullying. Even though child labour was a sad reality before corona, the pandemic has exacerbated this reality as child labour becomes an economic necessity for many families’ survival. Some studies show that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 per cent increase in child labour in certain countries. We now see that millions of children are at risk of being pushed into child labour, which could lead to the first rise in child labour after 20 years of positive progress. Furthermore, youth who are currently in the work force – or are now trying to enter the work force – will find it increasingly difficult find decent employment. A new ILO study has just emerged indicating that more than one in six young people have stopped working since the onset of the pandemic. “If their talent and energy is sidelined by a lack of opportunity or skills, it will damage all our futures and make it much more difficult to re-build a better, post-COVID economy,” says Guy Ryder, head of the ILO. This “lost generation” will face permanent exclusion from labour markets and as the world recovers from the pandemic, it’s a fear that many young people will be left behind. Introduction Let children be children, is not only a popular phrase heard in education, but it is also my motto. Yes, it is true, today’s children are tomorrow’s future; but how we choose to raise our children determines the outcome of our future. Many believe academics should be stressed more in schools, taking away from children’s playtime. I feel that play is what molds a child. Play allows not only a child’s imagination to run freely, but builds and strengthens children’s motor, language, cognitive, and social emotional development skills. I believe that play; along with parental involvement forms a child’s identity. Play is what makes children: tomorrow’s future. Body Motor Development…show more content… However, it is important to remember that according to Melina in Charlesworth’s book, “motor development is influenced by a number of factors: genetics, status at birth, size, build and composition, nutrition, rearing and birth order, social class, ethnicity, and culture” (Charlesworth, 2000.p.151). Therefore, these factors help to explain the story of life, and why every child learns how to do things at their own pace, rather than at the same time as every other child their age. A few examples of Fine Motor activities displayed during the early years include handwriting skills, drawing pictures, making objects out of clay, and even cutting with scissors. Each of these activities is characterized by including the small-muscle developments that involve finger-thumb coordination, hand-eye coordination, and the development of muscle strength in the hand and arm. All in all, motor skills are an important part of the learning process, and as these “fundamental motor skills are learned...[they] serve as the foundation for more specialized motor skills that will be learned later” (Charlesworth, 2000.p.157). As I share this, it strikes me that this notion that all children are entitled to an education feels selfevident – but throughout the world, it’s actually not. For most of history, education was reserved for a handful of mostly privileged children, chiefly males. Sending children to school was not a priority for everyone. UNESCO was created to reverse this issue and promote the revolutionary idea that every child has the right to education without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. This is quite a long list, but it spells out the many ways in which societies have historically excluded whole segments of their populations. UNESCO put education on the global agenda, helping to strengthen a new awareness of the need to educate children throughout the world. It reached poor countries, which motivated themselves to educate vast swaths of their populations. It also reached industrialized countries, like the United States, where the Civil Rights Movement meant the racial laws that created education discrimination against black children became perceived as a widespread public disgrace, which needed to change. There was progress because there was political momentum – a momentum that UNESCO led for the past seventy-five years in all areas of education. Numbers speak for themselves. Seventy-five years ago, under a third of the world’s youth population attended primary school. Today, 90 percent of the world’s school-age children are enrolled in school. This is extraordinary progress, but it’s progress that remains unfinished. Millions of children in developing countries don’t have consistent access to an education. Millions of poor children in industrialized countries continue to face challenges – like those we see in the United States, where children from minority populations don’t have access to the nation’s best educational offerings. Girls also continue to enjoy fewer opportunities than boys throughout the world. In most places, minority groups are still at a disadvantage because of their race, gender, or disability status. And, as we all know, these inequalities have been exacerbated by COVID-19. While the pandemic has most immediately impacted the morality of elderly and high-risk populations, we must also focus on the inequalities our global youths are facing — as they’ve been confronted by very real challenges to their ability to receive a consistent and quality education. We must shine a spotlight on these children and youths. This imperative is well captured in the message that the United Nations adopted to observe World Children’s Day 2021: “A Better Future for Every Child.” In other words, we need a new momentum behind the rights of children — a momentum with the same kind of energy that was demonstrated 75 years ago when our ancestors collectively decided that all children had the right to go to school. Only this time, we must redouble our efforts to place a real emphasis on “every,” truly ensuring that no child is left behind.
