How do we educate for Sustainable Development?
May 16, 2016Training Session: Introducing Sustainable Development
May 30, 2016I thought I was so grown up. I once wore platforms and curled my hair for school. What a silly thing to do. 11 is such an interesting age, no longer a child but not yet a teenager. When I watched the I am eleven documentary, I got to hear stories from 11-year olds from 15 different countries and I felt like I got to know them quite well in the short time of the documentary.
My favourite part is when the kids talk about love. It is the absolute cutest and funniest thing. One girl knows when she will meet her future husband, what they will say to each other when they meet and how he will propose. Another thinks boys are a nuisance. One boy liked a girl’s pretty face and another spoke of three types of love: love for your family, love for your friends, and love for strangers, other human beings. Wise beyond his years, that one. Other topics the kids shared about, apart from telling us about their lives, include religion, peace and war, commonalities and differences with other 11-year-olds around the world and what they could change about the world.
Having spent a month on camp in 2015 and many local camps with 11-year-olds, it’s an age group I absolutely love working with (not that I don’t love all the kids I work with!). It’s hard to concisely describe an entire age group… they’re curious, they’re intelligent, they want to change the world, they’re loving, they’re inspiring. Since I’ve been a leader with CISV, though I call them kids, and those I’ve taken away on camps are ‘my kids’, I will never again think of kids as ‘just kids’. No one should. They are our future and their voices should be heard.
The project I am Eleven is a lovely idea about connecting people, remembering our 11-year-old selves and staying young at heart!
By Sarah Sauvé *
CISV would like to thank Sarah, who allowed us to re-blog excepts of her post from her personal blog.
* Sarah Sauvé is currently a PhD student at Queen Mary University with Dr. Marcus Pearce in the Music Cognition Lab and Dr. Elaine Chew in the Music Performance and Expression Lab (MuPaE)
