Children Fighting Bad Treatment

The Child Advocates are getting down to business. Recently 61 of our Bolivian child ambassadors and youth leaders met in Cochabamba for their 6th Annual Meeting, a weekend of planning, leadership activities, devotions, and of course a talent show. 

Viva’s Child Advocates (Protagonismo Infantil in Spanish) have been causing a stir around Bolivia. Their Good Treatment campaign ‘vaccinated’ more than 28,000 adults against child abuse this year, and the advocates themselves are often arranging interviews with radio hosts, television programmes and government authorities to get word out about treating children properly and respecting child rights. 

Viva’s city-wide networks throughout the country provide the platform for these little leaders to get together and talk about successes, plan out strategies and events, and learn from one another – at neighbourhood, city and national levels.

The most recent meeting was one of the national ones. Viva arranged for 61 child ambassadors, between the ages of 10 and 16, from projects all over the country to meet so they could motivate and encourage one another and strengthen the role of children in their cities. These leaders represent the foster homes, orphanages, street children outreach ministries, and other organisations that care for them; they were elected by their peers on the basis of their personal gifts and leadership skills. Their mission was to plan the national strategy for the next five years. This is what they came up with:

September 2010-2011: Action against child abuse
September 2011-2012: Campaign against child labour exploitation
September 2012-2013: Anti-abortion campaign
September 2013-2014: Child abandonment awareness campaign
September 2014-2015: Action against child trafficking

Sound a bit heavy for a bunch of children? They think so too, and that’s why they’re fighting so hard to end these issues that many Bolivian children deal with every day. Children can – and should be – key players in ending violations of their rights. 

They’ll continue to use the tactics they’ve tried and proven over the last six years –thousands of vulnerable children marching through the city streets, holding huge prayer rallies, and broadcasting their message through media, churches and schools. They will doubtless come up with new ways of pressuring Bolivia’s adults, too!

The weekend was filled with planning sessions, leadership workshops, lectures and devotions. The child ambassadors were able to learn from one another of different issues that are challenging children around Bolivia. But it’s not just good for them – “Our intention is to give training and education to these children leaders so they can also reach other children, keep them informed and motivated to make positive changes,” says the network office.

Amanda, the ambassador representing one of the projects in Oruro, said of the weekend, “The devotional time was very good, it made us think and motivated us to do more things, because we can do everything through Christ who strengthens us! In the workshops we talked about good treatment issues. In this meeting we exchanged ideas to make things more interesting and also it helped us to know each other more.” The ambassadors discussed how they could use images to educate and inform their neighbourhoods – so Bolivians should be on the lookout for giant colourful Child Advocates posters popping up around the country!

It wasn’t all hard work though. Our child advocates also had a talent show, performing songs, comedy acts, dances and dramas for one another and generally behaving like children … something vulnerable kids in Bolivia don’t always get the chance to do. Following that they watched a great cinematographic masterpiece: ‘Karate Kid 4’!

The projects, children, networks, communities and families surrounding these intrepid children are waiting to see what new and creative ways they’ll come up with to protect the rights of children. We at Viva are so proud to see these children, so undervalued by their society, coming together to change their whole culture.



Viva Bolivia 


Learn more about Child Advocates at www.viva.org/advocates