These Rights are Mine

The project uses participatory drama methods to explore the meaning of Rights of the Child and the responsibilities that accompany those rights with young people. About 180 pupils from six secondary schools in Kampala, some of whom, members of "Straight Talk" groups, worked with SWT using participatory drama to research and devise a performance about the Rights of the Child for their school, feeder primary schools, the local community, and policy makers. Each school chose up to five of the rights most important to them to form the basis of the content of a play.

An exercise that SWT calls the 'Seven W's' was introduced as a quick method of creating a narrative for a central character whose story illustrated the rights chosen. This exercise poses a set of seven questions to the group about the main protagonist. The group then create still pictures and role-plays to illustrate different aspects of the situation of that central character, and go forward and backwards in time to explore causes and consequences of their actions and those of others affecting or effected by the situation. By this stage St. Francis and Kazo Hill (the two schools that had been working together as a group) were working separately, so six storylines were created.

The 'Seven W's' are:

• WHO is this? (name, nationality/ tribe/ culture, age, economic status and so on)
• WHAT is happening to them? (situation relating to the chosen Rights)
• WHAT have they decided to do? (what action are they about to take)
• WHY did they decide this? (influences, emotions)
• WHO else is affected? (other key characters)
• WHAT caused this situation? (past)
• WHAT are the consequences? (future)

Rights, Children, Abuse, Education.

The project seeks to broaden children's existing focus on sexual abuse. It also aims to discover the meaning of children's rights with young people in Uganda and to use participatory drama to create narratives from the participants' own experiences. The project supports each group of participants to create an interactive performance that can be a resource for peer education on child rights within their schools.