World Childrens Day - 2008
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- Created on 17 January 2009
To celebrate International Children's Day-2008, the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka decided to hold a day of arts and crafts for children in the multi-ethnic town of Trincomalee on 11th of October 2008. Ninety students from Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim schools participated, spending the day together at the Club Oceanic Hotel, Trincomalee. After playing a few games which encouraged them to step outside the conventional ethnicity-based thinking, the children were taught the basic techniques of origami, collage, sculpting, and pastels. Using these art forms, they children were then asked to express their own ideas of beauty, harmony and peace.
During this time, National Peace Council of Sri Lanka also held a workshop for teachers on Rights-Based Education. Using their personal expressions of rights-based education, the teachers discussed the capacity of the current education system to meet their students' needs, and suggested ways in which it could be improved. The government-level officials who attended participated in the workshop, and promised to address the teachers' concerns.
The day culminated in a time of sharing, as children sang and expressed their own hopes for peace. Prizes were awarded to the best creation from each group. Certificates and gift packets (of stationery items, and books) were distributed to all.