Every child is born with rights, like a flower with petals

A child at St Bernadette's Children's Centre in Peru working on crafts. Photo: Fr Tony Coney SSC

Adults - mothers, fathers, relatives, teachers, friends, neighbours - relate daily with children and adolescents. So, it is good to ask ourselves: How do we approach them? Does the relationshipthat we establish helpthem grow?

The reality is that we assume different attitudes according to how we see children and relate to them according to our expectations of them.

In the Children’s Centre, just as in St Bernadette’s Home and School, we assume that children and adolescents are, before all else, human beings and, as such, have rights. We understand that these rights are accompanied by duties and responsibilities - but we believe these are learned as young people come to appreciate, through experience, the value of exercising their rights and allowing others to exercise theirs.

From this perspective, we propose to create physical and social spaces where these children and adolescents can experience the exercising of and respect for their rights in daily living, in play, in friendship, in being helped with their homework, and in the different recreational workshops offered.

At the Children’s Centre, St Bernadette’s Home and School, we want to contribute integrally and harmoniously, alongside parents and teachers, to the growth of the children and adolescents so that they feel valued, respected and welcomed. That is to say, so that they can live as people with rights and, therefore, as citizens. While still young, they can make their rights a reality by contributing to collective projects in the family, schools, friendshipgroups, the local area and country.

To achieve this goal, we have joined our attempts with other institutions, both private and public. Through the years, we have learnt the importance of social relations and creating networks to achieve common objectives that unite us. Currently, we coordinate with the National Identification Registrar, Emergency Centres, Child Protection and Social Development Agencies, Free Legal Aid, Health Centres, and Alimentation Programs, among others.

Along with networking with these institutions, we want to contribute through our own centres so that children and adolescents not only experience their right to be protected but also receive attention if a right is undermined. Children need to feel that their condition of being subjects with rights is inherent in all aspects of life.

“Life belongs to the child as light to the dawn”. (Arturo Corcuera, Poet)