Caroline Adophson
Presentation Title: Children’s right to health
Presentation Description: UNCRC article 24 gives the child a right to enjoy the “highest attainable standard of health” leaving the state with a margin of appreciation and room for taking into account the financial situation of the country. Article 24 addresses a number of focus points that can seem far from the current challenges faced by children and youth in the Western countries such as pre-natal and post-natal healthcare for mothers, diminishing infant and child mortality and access to clean drinking water. However, we must not lose sight of the importance of starting your life with the best possible level of health. Obesity, mental health and a healthy development of one’s sexuality are issues that are crucial for a young person in order for her/him to thrive and grow into a healthy adulthood. My talk will address these challenges and discuss different tendencies that appear to be going in the wrong direction. I will look at both the States responsibilities and the protection of the child when the parent does not act in the best interest of the child’s health.
David Alexander
Presentation Title: Understanding how we understand children and childhood
Presentation Description: How we view children is a framework that has been socially constructed across time and culture. It is important to realize that there are many different ways of viewing children and childhood. The current challenges that children face could be alleviated if we viewed children and childhood from a human rights perspective. Dr. Alexander will provide a fascinating cultural context for us to evaluate how we look at children and what is in “the best interests of the child”.
Jetta Bernier
Presentation Title: Enough Abuse Campaign
Presentation Description: The Enough Abuse Campaign is a citizen education and community mobilization effort working in communities across the nation to prevent the sexual abuse of children.
Ralph Chan
Presentation Title: How Education Investments Impact Youth Opportunities
Presentation Description: Higher education students in the United States may end up with over $100,000 in school loans - but many nations support college students so they pay almost nothing for their degrees. Chan will discuss the implications of education and the importance of social policies to invest in youth education. The Austrian state invests more money in the education system than in the USA, thereby facilitating access to free
education. In combination, this also connected with children's human rights.
Jack Dalton
Presentation title: Empowering Children Through Education and Encouraging Action
Presentation description: Jack is an animal activist, public speaker, author, and educational YouTuber. He has become an international advocate for the protection of orangutans and the environment and has constructed his own website, book, films, educational presentations, and other activism. He will talk about what children need in order to be meaningful contributors to the world.
Nolan Davis
Presentation title: Using Your Voice to Make a Change for Racial Justice
Presentation Description: Nolan's presentation will focus on how a child witnessed racial and social injustice and decided to take action in his community to make the world a better, safer place.
Shannon Desilets
Presentation Title: Children's Right to Love and Be Loved
Presentation Description: The Choose Love Movement was created as a result of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in Newtown, CT. This presentation discusses why loving-kindness is a better strategy for children to learn than violence and hate.
Peter DiGenarro
Presentation Title: The Fretless Base: The Arts, Human Rights Education, and a Return to Possibilities
Presentation Description: In this presentation, we will synthesize select elements from the fields of individual, social, and cultural psychologies; the fields of arts education, production, and performance; and the fundamental tenets, standards, and generative themes of International Human Rights and Peace Education, showing a clear homology between each across an interdisciplinary approach, while presenting a synergized tool for identifying, addressing, engaging, utilizing, and superseding the notion of “ability”, especially within music education, and foregrounding the somatized, phenomenological presence of a revealed and revealing consciousness
City of Salem Mayor Kimberley Driscoll ’89
Presentation Title: Welcome
Presentation Description: The City of Salem has designated itself as a community that is in support of children’s rights, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mark Engman
Presentation Title: The Importance of Child Rights
Presentation Description: UNICEF USA supports children’s rights to provision, protection, and participation. This presentation will examine some of the challenges of doing this.
Marty Fox
Presentation Title: Sports, Youth and Their Rights
Presentation Description: The international sports community has taken a leadership role in defending the rights of young athletes. They have created a Children's Bill of Rights in Sports and are working actively to make sure all children are provided the opportunity to play sports, they are protected when they do, and they have opportunity to participate in decisions that impact them. Mr. Fox will provide an overview of what the sports community is doing as leaders in the children's human rights world.
Danielle Goldberg
Presentation Title: The Child Friendly Community Initiative
Presentation Description: UNICEF has developed a child friendly community initiative that many cities across the nation are implementing. This presentation discusses what they are, how they work, and their benefits.
Rebecca Hains (with Kyra Hunting)
Presentation Title: Politics of Children’s Toys and Media
Presentation Description: The children’s toys and media industries are major influences on children’s lives. They are also very profitable industries that deserve much more critical attention. Dr. Hains will explore the political and economic interests behind what children play with and view.
Hamilton-Wenham Human Rights Coalition, with Olivia Soolman, Neve Sheckells, Mariana Kaulbach, Maya Beach
Presentation title: Developing Movements for Local Change
Presentation description: Olivia, Neve, Mariana, and Maya have worked to promote human rights in their school and towns. They will explain what they have done, why they have done it, the challenges and opportunities they have faced in their initiatives, and give advice to both youth and adults looking to create a multi-generational movement change in their community.
Elizabeth Handsley
Presentation Title: Media, Law, and Children’s Rights
Presentation Description: This attorney examines children’s rights from a legal perspective as it pertains to their exposure and exploitation by media and consumerist groups.
Theresa Harris
Presentation title: Children’s human rights and the right to science
Presentation description: Everyone has the right to enjoy the benefits of science and it’s applications, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The right to science has potential implications for how we approach access to STEM education, apply evidence about child development, conduct research involving children, and handle data collection from technology used by children. The presentation will explore these issues and potential actions to protect children’s rights in the USA as they relate to the right to science.
Kristin Henning
Presentation Title: Race, Trauma, and the Criminalization of Adolescence in America
Presentation description: Weaving together powerful narratives and persuasive data, Professor Henning explores the criminalization of normal adolescence and makes a compelling case that racial disparities in America’s juvenile and criminal legal systems are rooted in the unfounded, and sometimes intentionally manufactured, fears of youth of color. Unlike white youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries and figure out who they are and who they want to be, youth of color are seen as a threat and denied the privileges of healthy adolescent play, adventure, and experimentation. Professor Henning will examine the long-term consequences of racism and trauma that arise from aggressive policing and demonstrate how contemporary law enforcement practices have socialized a generation of teenagers to fear and resent the police.
Tanya Herring
Presentation Title: A Conversation About Children, Youth, and Criminal Justice
Presentation Description: Dr. Herring will give commentary to the presentations by Dr. Henning and Mr. Davis about race and criminal justice in the US through a children’s human rights lens.
David Hogg
Presentation Title: An Interview With A School Shooting Survivor and Social Change Advocate
Presentation Description: David Hogg was a student at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida when 19 people were shot to death at the school in 2018. He has become an advocate for gun control and has inspired #March for Our Lives and governmental legislation. This is a pre-recorded interview with Mr. Hogg about his experiences and what he thinks about the children's human rights movement in the United States.
Human Rights Watch Student Task Force
Presentation Title: Human Rights and the Climate Crisis Virtual Town Hall
Presentation Description: The Human Rights Watch Student Task Force (STF) is a youth leadership-training program that brings together high school students and educators from Southern California and empowers them to advocate for human rights issues, especially the rights of children. Each year STF trains and mentors student leaders and activists across 18 Southern California high schools. With the support of STF staff and participating educators, STF student leaders coordinate chapter meetings and events while guiding their school-based chapters in an annual campaign to raise awareness and engage peers on specific human rights issues. This is a film about how they work together to promote climate and environmental protection.
Meg Gardinier
Presentation Title: The Important Contributions of the United States Historically in the Creation of Children’s Human Rights: Where are we now?
Presentation description: The USA was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations international children’s human rights treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This treaty was signed by Secretary of State Madeline Albright under President Bill Clinton, but it was never ratified. Explanations of why and where children’s human rights stand at this point in time will be explored in this provocative presentation.
Generation Citizen
Presentation Title: What Is Generation Citizen?
Presentation Description: This presentation will overview what the Generation Citizen organization is, what it does, and why it provides important support to young people to be good citizens in the United States.
Elizabeth Gershoff
Presentation Title: Corporal Punishment and Children's Rights
Presentation Topic: Corporal punishment is regularly used around the nation. This presentation will examine data on its use and its implications, and prove that corporal punishment is not in the best interests of the child.
Christine James-Brown
Presentation Title: Child Poverty in the USA
Presentation Description: The group of people most likely to experience poverty in the United States are children. Children under age 5 are the poorest of the poor. Poverty is antithetical to children’s good health; it is in the early years of life that key biological, cognitive, and developmental foundations are being laid. This presentation will showcase data from a variety of international studies and explore ways child poverty has been addressed by organizations, communities and the nation. The speakers will provide key insights into the poverty dynamics in the nation and they will make recommendations on new directions that may yield more positive benefits for children and youth.
Melissa Juchniewicz
Presentation Title: The right to read the word and the world
Presentation Description: Every day in the United States, censorship of children's books gets more egregious -- and more common. Children's books are being pulled from school libraries and banned in communities at alarming rates. Article 13 of the UNCRC states that a child has a right to the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers. Children are taking the initiative of forming banned books clubs and are finding ways to counter the censorship, and librarians and teachers may be willing to fight to keep books in children's hands. This talk will provide some context for our present time by looking at how children's books were purposed from their earliest beginnings to the present day.
Nazneen Khan
Presentation Title: COVID-19 and Children’s Human Rights
Presentation Description: This talk explores the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and social inequality through a children’s human rights framework. Through exploration of social science data on children’s vaccination rates, their COVID-19 related mortality and morbidity rates, and other pandemic outcomes relating to child wellbeing, this presentation makes the case for animating the rights of children.
Emily Perl Kingsley
Presentation Topic: Rights of Children with Disabilities to Be Seen, Heard, and Respected
Presentation Description: Ms. Kingsley was a writer at Sesame Street who is responsible for introducing children with disabilities into television programming. Her courageous actions have changed the media industry and empowered the voices of marginalized children. Her personal and professional stories are illuminating and inspiring for us all to hear.
Ema Sofia Leitao
Presentation Title: Impact of the pandemic on desinformation, misinformation and hate speech
Presentation Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled the rise of disinformation and misinformation about the virus, heath measures, and civic interactions. It has also increased the rise of hate speech against people of different nationalities, ethnic groups, races, age groups, and social classes. A child’s human rights to have access to accurate and trustworthy factual information is the focus of this short video presentation.
Lina Lenberg
Presentation Title: Child Voices For Human Rights
Presentation Description: Students in this class join their voices together to speak about their views of children having human rights in a video that they are making for this conference. Dr. Lenberg will also discuss how to implement a children’s human rights perspective into schools in a positive, constructive manner.
Wendy Schaetzel Lesko
Presentation title: Minors Matter! Movement towards Intergenerational Collaboration
Presentation description: Authentic and sustained collaboration with children is happening! Learn about a small but growing number of adult-run nonprofits and government agencies across the U.S. that recognize a behemoth blindspot. The exclusion of those under age 18 is being replaced by the intentional inclusion of minors. These early adopters are infusing a cohort of teens into the heart of their organizational operations to be co-strategists in evaluating current programs and services as well as influencing future priorities and policies. Top experts and professionals increasingly rely on youth for their unique knowledge both as interpreters and translators of the grievances and dreams of the youngest generation – the most diverse in history. Intergenerational symbiosis requires a seismic shift in the adult attitudes and behaviors toward children as well as organizational policies including providing compensation, especially to work with marginalized youth. These seeds of multi-racial intergenerational interdependence may represent both a pragmatic and moral drive that minors matter in the pursuit of a more just and equitable society.
Bruce Lesley
Presentation Title: Childism in the USA: What it is and why it matters
Presentation Description: Adultification and childism are common practices that have negative consequences for the way young people are perceived and treated. This national expert and advocate for children’s wellbeing examines how children are viewed and their implications. Examples of ways the nation could shift the narrative about children to benefit them are provided.
Scarlett Lewis
Presentation title: Choose Love Movement
Presentation description: The Movement's Choose Love for Schools Program is a no-cost, comprehensive, lifespan, next generation, SEL and character development program, empowering educators and students to choose love, handle adversity, and manage their emotions. Choose Love programming is extended into homes, communities, athletics, and the workplace, and has been accessed in all 50 states and over 120 countries. Speaking across the US and internationally to diverse audiences, Scarlett urges everyone to become part of the solution, dedicating her life to helping children and adults around the world to thrive mentally, socially, and emotionally, and she has been instrumental in changing legislation to incorporate SEL into schools. In 2021, Scarlett was named a Forbes 50 over 50 Impact Honoree, one of 50 women leading the way with impact and changing their communities and the world in ways big and small through social entrepreneurship, law, advocacy and education.
State Senator Joan Lovely ’06
Presentation Title: How To Create a Child Commission
Presentation Description: Senator Lovely has promoted the creation of a Child and Youth Commission for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and will talk about what it entails and how they can be built in other states and communities.
Anika Manzoor
Presentation Title: Teen Activism: An Untapped Force for Social Change
Presentation Description: Anika will describe what the Youth Activism Project is, how it came about, and what it is doing to empower young people throughout the USA.
Ellen Marrus
Presentation Title: Children’s Human Rights and the Law
Presentation Description: Children’s needs for their rights to be protected are present in almost every aspect of their daily lives but are typically are failed to be recognized except in extreme cases. Her work examines professional ethics. She is an expert in in family law and children's issues, an immigration clinic, a transactional clinic, a juvenile defense clinic, a mediation clinic, criminal prosecution and defense clinics, and an extensive externship placement program in a variety of government and public interest law firms and judicial internships with state and federal judges
Quixada Moore-Vissing
Presentation Title: Civic Engagement Includes Children and Youth
Presentation Description: Civic engagement expert explains what civic engagement is and why it is important to include young people in community measurements, data, policy, and practices. Focusing on the participatory role of child and youth rights, communities can benefit significantly from youth input and in the process teach them how to build democracy and peaceful, rights-respecting communities.
Jose Noronha Rodrigues
Presentation Title: Child Rights in Portugal
Presentation Description: This short film was made by the daughter of a children’s human rights professor to show the importance of children’s rights being defended in Portugal.
Kristi Rudelius-Palmer
Presentation Title: Children and Youth Rights Training in Action
Presentation Description: Human rights education is required in most human rights treaties but is not well implemented in schools across the United States. There are many different resources that exist on how to include human rights education (HRE) from preschool through higher education and at the community-wide levels. This presentation will showcase some of the many ways HRE can be accessed and embedded to improve the lives of children, youth, adults, and communities.
Alison Sabean
Presentation Title: We Are More Than You Think
Presentation Description: Young people carry a lot more inside than what outside observers may suspect. This presentation deals with body image issues, eating disorders, mental health challenges, sexual and gender orientation, and the increased suicide epidemic of youth in America. Provided by a young woman, this honest and heart-felt presentation shows the importance of listening to young people and helping them to access the resources they need to survive and thrive.
Leah Salloway
Presentation Title: The right to a self-determined future for children with disabilities
Presentation Description: Students with disabilities are legally entitled to have their vision and input drive their educational and transitional plans in the public schools. Yet some students, especially those with high reliance on caregivers do not have the opportunity to share that with their educational teams. When students are able to share their thoughts and feelings about the future true magic can happen. This session will discuss how the voice of children with disabilities can be empowered, while still navigating a high-stakes and competitive housing and work force.
Graça Santos
Presentation Title: Children’s Human Rights to Education: Intergenerationality, older adults, and participation in the community
Presentation Description: This professor teaches teachers how to be rights respecting, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Education is a human right, not just for children but for people of all ages. This short presentation showcases education as a right across the lifespan.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen
Presentation Title: Welcome to the Importance of Children’s Human Rights in the USA
Presentation Description: New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen has worked throughout her entire career advocating for better lives for children. As a co-founding member of the NH Children’s Alliance and other programs and policies, she joins us with a welcome on why children’s human rights are important in the United States of America.
Audrey Smolkin
Presentation Topic: Children and Trauma: What communities can do to help them
Presentation Description: The Center on Child Wellbeing & Trauma will be examined in this presentation and how it works with organizations, professionals, parents, and children across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to promote wellbeing and reduce the short and long-term consequences of trauma. This presentation is made along with the Office of the Child Advocate.
Michele Solloway
Presentation topic: Trauma’s impact on children’s minds and bodies
Presentation description: Trauma is an unfortunately common childhood experience, one that comes in many different forms and can have lifelong consequences. This presentation will examine sources of trauma, how trauma impacts the brain, neurological systems, human development, and its lifelong consequences. Understanding more about the causes and consequences of trauma can help professionals, teachers, parents, and individuals to better prevent it in the first place, identify it when it occurs, and heal from it.
Sarah Sugatt
Presentation Title: Why therapy is important for children and the child within us
Presentation Description: Children experience a host of traumas, emotional challenges, and mental health issues that can have long-lasting impacts on them. This presentation examines the benefit of therapeutic intervention in helping people navigate their lives.
Melissa Threadgill
Presentation Topic: Children and Trauma: What communities can do to help them
Presentation Description: The Center on Child Wellbeing & Trauma will be examined in this presentation and how it works with organizations, professionals, parents, and children across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to promote wellbeing and reduce the short and long-term consequences of trauma. This presentation is made along with the Office of the Child Advocate.
Kay Tisdall
Presentation title: Learning from Scotland: The journey to incorporating the UNCRC
Presentation Description: For over 10 years, the Scottish Government has promoted the strapline ‘making children’s rights real’ for its childhood policy. This finally is being realized, with the incorporation of the UNCRC into Scottish domestic law imminent. This presentation will reflect on the journey to this point and forthcoming challenges, to share learning points from Scotland that may be useful for children’s rights advocates in the USA.
Jonathan Todres
Presentation Title: Making Children’s Rights Widely Known
Presentation Description: Children’s rights are foundational to advancing child well-being and to ensure that every child has the opportunity to develop to their full potential. But without knowledge of one’s rights, the realization of rights is much less certain. In short, human rights education—and in particular, children’s rights education—is vital to ensuring that young people understand their rights and their responsibilities to respect the rights of others. This presentation discusses the benefits of human rights education and strategies for implementing it. It will address current challenges and discuss innovative ways to ensure children learn about and understand their rights.
State Representative Paul Tucker '87
Presentation Title: Welcome and Importance of Child Rights
Presentation Description: This Massachusetts state representative, attorney, and criminal justice expert will provide a welcome to the conference and explain why children’s rights are important.
Yvonne Vissing
Presentation Title: Welcome to the conference and explanation of events
Presentation Description: Why Children’s Human Rights Are Important will be briefly overviewed. All UN member countries have ratified an international children’s human rights treaty except for the USA. Children in the US have higher rates of poverty, suicide, violence victimization, and other preventable problems than almost all developed nations as a result. Our children’s futures – and the future of our nation – depends upon our investment in children’s rights to provision, protection, and participation
Katherine Walts
Presentation Title: Children’s Human Rights
Presentation Description: Dr. Walts is in charge of the Loyola University Center for the Human Rights of Children. She will explain what the center does and why children’s human rights are important.
Jane Williams, Professor of Law and Director of the Observatory
Presentation Title: What We Can Learn About Universal Children’s Rights in Wales
Presentation Description: The international protection of children’s human rights has been promoted by the Observatory for the Human Rights of Children at Swansea University. Leaders share what they are doing and why it is important to children. This presentation will explore the importance of children’s rights from a global perspective and its implications for children of all ages in the United States.
Dr. Rev. Starsky Wilson
Presentation Title: Raising Democracy: The Importance of Participation in Public Policy for Child Well-Being.
Presentation description: Dr. Wilson will draw upon the extensive research conducted at the Children’s Defense Fund to showcase what children’s lives are like today in the USA. He will focus on issues of health, education, equality, justice, participation, criminal justice, etc. He will examine the nation’s commitment to providing and protecting children and youth.
Joseph Wright
Presentation Title: Reimagining Children's Rights in the United States Context
Presentation Description: In this presentation, we will overview the findings from a yearlong project run by UCLA's Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities that asks how can we strategically advance children's rights in the United States given the current political, economic, and social conditions. Using a Three Horizon framework the project brought together 40+ academics, activists, youth, practitioners, and many others in a series of design sessions that first answered the question "why reimagine children's rights now" and then went on to explore "how" and "what" can be done. The project resulted in several findings regarding potential strategic directions that will be shared in this presentation.
Heidi Young
Presentation Title: Addressing Youth Homelessness with Youth Leadership
Presentation Description: Homelessness and housing distress is a common experience for young people.
Adriana Zhang
Presentation Title: Youth Mobilization to Create Positive CHANGE
Presentation Description: The founder of San Francisco CHANGE is a teenage student in high school. She has used the skills learned on how to create a child friendly community to develop an important organization that assists people of all age in San Francisco.
Pinar Zubaroglu-Ioannides
Presentation title: The Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Impacts Around the World
Presentation Description: This presentation will review what the Convention on the Rights of the Child is, what the Hope for Children CRC Policy Center does, why children’s rights are deemed important, and the benefits that children experience in countries that have ratified this international human rights treaty.