Masked not muted #voicesofyouth

"Outside our window, the world is suffering. Overcrowded hospitals awash with pain. Difference met with disdain. We hear the cried of mother Earth. We are her children you can't silence. She will hear her poem for her forests, our song for her oceans. Together, our call with be a thunderstorm. We are never too young, nor too small. Racism, discrimination, inequality — let's end them all. Masked but not muted, me and you."

This year's powerful call to action for International Children's Day is Masked Not Muted; a clear message that while we are going through some of the toughest times that children of this generation have lived through yet, masks (this pandemic, these harsh times), will never stop the children of this generation from fighting for a better planet.

Find out more about this year's International Children's Day HERE.

children are being separated from their parents at the border

It might be hard to believe, but it's time we all faced the insidious realities of our times. In 2017, the US government under Trump launched a pilot programme that saw the separation of over 1,000 migrant families crossing the border from Mexico into the US. That means children were forcefully separated from their parents and taken away to migrants camps and prisons alone.

The programme was kept secret from the world and the US public until 2019, and was a precursor to the notorious 2018 ‘zero-tolerance policy’ imposed by the White House; it had been used as a method of deterring migrants from coming to the US by separating parents from their children and deporting the parents without allowing them to apply for asylum (in violation of both US and international asylum laws).

Almost three years after the programme was launched, the deported parents of as many as 545 migrant children have yet to be located in Central America. And while the government was ordered by a federal judge to assume responsibility for reuniting families separated under the 2018 policy, it is NGO’s and activists who have been spearheading and managing the search for parents deported under the 2017 pilot programme.

Find out how you can support Justice In Motion NGO in their fight to reunite children with their parents. Click below!

Like UNICEF, many charities and NGOs – in some cases also companies – have made it their mission to save children’s lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.