Yes, we are a Referent Center in Child Rights Education by UNICEF and we feel the same joy, responsibility and desire to continue advancing and working in the same line.

This recognition is a distinction awarded by UNICEF to schools that promote and defend the rights of children through their educational actions and values the implementation that we do in EducoMontessori International School of an approach of education in children’s rights. It is not a one-time recognition, but a recognition of a continuous and sustained work over time in different areas: knowledge of children’s rights, child protection, child participation and the area of protection and welfare of the school climate. All these areas have been supervised by a UNICEF advisor who has been asking us for evidence, documents, experiences, interviews, etc.

We had come a long way and the process has been very enriching for us, since after this audit, new plans for improvement have emerged to continue working on the welfare and rights of our children.

We began to walk this path from the beginning of the school, with the inspiration of a great teacher of the search and defense of child welfare in an integral way, as was Dr. Maria Montessori. She observed the needs of children, and researched and published on the real needs of human beings creating a pedagogy from the deepest respect for the rights of children defending them daily in their educational environments, with a real field practice and the extension of their schools around the world.

We wonder how many people in the world have benefited from being able to resolve any conflict at the “peace table” from an early age, since we, who have the good fortune to observe it every day, never cease to be amazed at how easily an emotion can be healed through dialogue and understanding of the needs of others and the establishment of agreements.

But this is just to mention a small drop of a whole ocean of real resources, when there is the will of the adult to create and promote and education that respects the children’s needs.

Another of the experiences that have nurtured and filled us with clarity in the identification of child protection actions and the implementation of actions favourable to children’s rights, has been the path taken with NEACS, the international entity that accredits us. This entity has a strong emphasis on this aspect and they have examined it thoroughly at all levels, in each of their visits to our school. Therefore, when we considered the possibility of justifying what we were doing to UNICEF, we knew we had a lot to contribute.

Through this UNICEF program, we have been offered training in Child Rights, promoting new mechanisms for child participation and encouraging the creation of spaces for the well-being and improvement of the school climate. It is an initiative that is part of UNICEF’s CHILD RIGHTS SCHOOL program, which promotes worldwide an education focused on the best interests of each child.

We would love to be able to specify what kind of actions we do at school on a practical level to have been awarded this recognition, but in order not to extend, in this blog we will only mention some of them:

• A continuous work at different levels on the knowledge of children’s rights that is clearly included in the center’s programming and with different activities during the course planned by the Child Protection Commission of the center.

• An active child participation with daily assemblies, with the acceptance of proposals and ideas from the students themselves and the accompaniment to carry them out.

• The existence in the center of clear action protocols for the protection and welfare of children in our Child Protection Plan.

• The constant care of the school climate with resources such as mailboxes to ask for help, peer meetings, the peace table, multi-age classrooms, daily meditation, reduced ratios, the importance in the curriculum of emotional education, the use of non-violent communication and positive discipline by the teaching staff, educational community coexistence, etc.

Now the school is immersed in the preparation of an activity for November 20, World Children’s Day, and in the implementation of new pedagogical conferences to the community, as well as other activities of our improvement plan resulting from this new adventure that for the moment has compensated us with this recognition as a Referent Center by Unicef.