Lord Wandsworth College – Pupils React With Passion to Support Amnesty’s Campaign Against Child Marriage
24 Jun 2016
Sixth Form pupils at Lord Wandsworth College have recently formed an Amnesty International group and one of their first projects has been to lead a Write for Rights campaign* with younger pupils in Years 7 and 8.
Charley Rogerson, Zoë Mitchell, Marie Haddad, Nathan Luckhurst, Scott Campbell and Daniil Frank are currently studying A-Levels at the north Hampshire school and are all passionate about human rights. They gave a talk to the younger pupils about Child Marriage and told them about Burkina Faso, the French-speaking West African country where Amnesty is focusing their current campaign. The pupils were shocked by the statistic that one in three girls in Burkina Faso are married before they turn 18 and, in 2016, 15 million girls across the world will be married before their 18th birthday.
The pupils reacted with passion and commitment and quickly set to work making bunting with words that mean a lot to them, such as Le Courage (courage) and L’Espoir (hope), which they hoped would also resonate with the young girls who have managed to escape forced marriages. They wrote letters of support in French and then each put their thumb print on a giant poster of the Amnesty candle, which will be sent with the bunting to the girls who have sought refuge in a shelter in Burkina Faso.
Headmaster Adam Wiliams said, “I’m incredibly proud of our Amnesty Group and the work they’ve done with younger pupils. We encourage empathy and generosity in all of our pupils and they have shown this in abundance with their support for the girls of Burkina Faso.”
*Write for Rights is Amnesty International’s campaign to encourage people to send emails, write postcards or post on social media messages of support to those people around the world who are suffering.
Photo: from left to right, Charley Rogerson, Scott Campbell, Daniil Frank, Nathan Luckhurst, Marie Haddad and Zoë Mitchell