Before you start
- Firstly, familiarise yourself with the articles within the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. There is a summary on the first 2 pages and it goes a bit more into detail on the last 4. Read more about each right if you don’t know exactly what it means or involves
- Print 2 copies of the convention (ideally in colour) and cut each square out, or the squares you wish to use. If you don’t have access to a printer you could draw or write out your own squares. There are over 40 articles so you may choose to cut up or write out them all or just use a selection (depending on how much time you have and the size of your group). If you choose a selection you could choose the rights that seem most important to you/your group or the ones you want them to find out more about
- Decide where your treasure hunt will take place. You could do this in your usual venue or in a park or around your local area
- If you are going to use clues, you will need paper and pens
What to do
Choose Your Rights
Give each young person an article square (or in a smaller group more than one, until they are all held by someone). Ask who has article 1 (or another number if you’re not using this one), ask them to read it out, and then ask young people what they think this means. Where participants are unclear explain. Do this for all the articles you are going to include in the treasure hunt.
Hiding the Treasure
Decide who will be the ‘hiders’ and who will be the ‘finders’ for the first round and split the group into two. They should be on opposite sides of the room/space so they can’t hear each other.
The hiders should think about how they can help the finders know where to find the hidden squares. For older groups they can make helpful clues that go along with the right. For example article 31 is the right to rest, play, and take part in cultural and creative experiences, so young people may want to hide this one in the playground at the park or in a box of toys in your meeting space. Tell them to be as creative as they like with the clues! Some participants may just want to hide the squares around for others to find. Even without clues this is a great way to get to know the articles a bit better! They should write out the clues on paper.
While the hiders are coming up with clues, the finders should spend some more time familiarising themselves with the articles. Might there be clues to where the hiders would put certain articles in their meaning?
The finders should leave the room or close their eyes and cover them while the hiders hide their squares. Then the hiders should join the finders and put their clues next to the corresponding squares in the finders’ set. If you aren’t using clues the finders can use their squares to know how many they are looking for.
If there’s time, you can choose just a selection of the articles to hide in the first round, and swap over hiders and finders to repeat the activity. But make sure there’s still time for the discussion afterwards!
Discussion questions
Frame a discussion with the young people around the following questions:
- Are there any rights you didn’t know about?
- Do you want to find out more about any of the articles?
- Which rights are easy to be met, respected and recognised?
- Which are more difficult to be met, respected and recognised?
- How could we raise awareness of the rights of the child and the convention’s importance?