Commonwealth Class - Children of the Commonwealth

Resource Description

Oli’s Child Marriage Crusade – a film from Bangladesh.

Oli is a 12-year-old boy from Bangladesh who is campaigning against child marriage.

Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world with 20 per cent of girls becoming wives before their 15th birthday, even though the law says that they should not get married before the age of 18.

Oli became fed-up of seeing his friends dropping out of school and decided to do something about it.

He and his friends try to talk to their elders in the local area about why they shouldn’t marry off their daughters so
young.

They have already halved the number of child marriages in the local area.

School journeys: Barefoot – a film from Kenya

How do your pupils get to school? Perhaps they travel by bus, bike or boat or maybe they walk to school.

In the foothills of Mount Elgon in Kenya, the children walk to school and they walk barefoot.

The roads are made of earth and rocks, and during the rainy season these turn into giant, muddy slides which makes getting to school really tricky.

The area is famous for producing some of the best distance runners in the world.

The high altitude means there’s less oxygen in the air, making it harder to breathe and run.

The children get used to training in these conditions, and become extra resilient.

This gives them an advantage when racing against others at lower altitude.