On Friday 8th December Mr Chris Senior from the Haywards Heath Amnesty International group came to speak to the Year 10 Life Skills class of Burgess Hill School for Girls. To start the talk Chris lit his Amnesty Candle, a large white candle wrapped in barbed wire, and asked the girls if they could work out the symbolism behind the Amnesty logo. They correctly answered that the lit candle represented hope in a world where some people are abused, falsely imprisoned or have lost their human rights.
The girls were then given the opportunity to read real life cases of people who are imprisoned at this time and to choose someone to send a card of support and good wishes to, letting them know they have not been forgotten or abandoned.
Amnesty International believes in peaceful protest against the abuse of people’s human rights, and was started by Peter Benenson in 1961 as a 1-year campaign to highlight the plight of 2 Portuguese prisoners of conscience he had read about in a newspaper. The campaign ignited people’s imaginations and desire to help others in dreadful situations in a realistic yet effective way, and has developed into a world wide campaign with 1.8 million members.
14/12/2006
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| Amnesty International Talk |
