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Media releases > Richard Curtis calls on teaching unions
Richard Curtis makes urgent Easter plea to all UK teachers
(27 March 2005)
The latest film from Richard Curtis calls on teachers to make every child in the country aware of how incredibly hard the lives of other children can be.
Made for the two key teacher conferences (NUT and NASUWT) across Easter, his film seeks support for the Send My Friend to School (SMFTS) campaign as part of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY and the Global Campaign for Education of which VSO is a member.
The SMFTS campaign is urging millions of children to create cut-out figures, dubbed 'buddies', to represent the hundred million children out of school across the world. From as small as A4 to life size, each one will include a message for the G8 leaders in time for the July Gleneagles Summit. In the film Curtis says:
We hope that we are going to have millions of children all over the world taking part in this project."
He goes on to acknowledge the key role teachers play in influencing future perceptions and actions.
I do believe that it is incredibly important that the next generation really learns about how poor people live, and learns to care about it, so that they don't behave in the callous way that our generation has.
Citing the 30,000 children who die each day through extreme poverty, he accuses current leaders of not doing enough. Curtis claims that if this happened in Coventry one day, Connecticut the next, then Paris and Rome,
...the G8 leaders would find the money to sort out the problems on the walk from the lift to the breakfast bar at Gleneagles.
He wants teachers to help make the next generation see all people of all races as equally important.
Before Nelson Mandela closes the film, Curtis says,
I ask you as a Union and as individuals to do all that you can to tell the Government that this is the year to take the crucial steps to Make Poverty History; to try and establish justice on trade, to cancel debt and to find the money for more and better aid so that children across the world have a proper right to life and an education.
Copies of the SMFTS leaflet were sent to all UK schools in January followed by videotapes and CD-roms of a film with Konnie Huq made with children from Langdon School in London.
Editors' notes- VSO is working together with over 100 NGOs, teachers unions and child rights organisations in the Global Campaign for Education, calling G8 leaders to keep their promises to give $5.6 billion extra every year to make it possible for every boy and girl to finish primary school by 2015.
- www.sendmyfriend.org features lesson plans, buddy templates, an online buddy-maker, a micro-site for children plus the Send My Friend To School video with Konnie Huq
- The Global Campaign for Education brings together major NGOs and teachers' unions in over 150 countries around the world. It promotes education as a basic human right and mobilises public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfil their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people. UK member organisations include ActionAid, ATL, Comic Relief, EIS, NASUWT, NUT, Oxfam, Plan, Save the Children, Sight Savers International, SSTA, UTU and VSO. www.campaignforeducation.org
- MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY brings together a wide cross section of more than 300 UK charities, campaigns, trade unions, faith groups and celebrities who are united by a common belief that 2005 offers a unprecedented opportunity for global change. www.makepovertyhistory.org
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