I challenge you to a story…

I’m doing an assembly in a new school about courage…

Did you know that the wellbeing of children in the UK is worse than in any other developed country, according to recent UNICEF research?

A survey out today shows that an increasing number of children and young people are less happy than their predecessors and suffer from depression and concerns about their health. Contributing factors include family breakdown, peer pressure, media influences and school work and have been identified as causes of poor mental health.

Read on for a bit more info and a great idea by The Children’s Society to gather childhood memories.

The Assemblies Website has coined the term ‘assemblet’, which describes an essential feature of school assemblies. They are ‘short, snappy stories with a clear effective message’. I hadn’t come across this term before today, maybe I missed class that day, but it helps me to think again about collecting a bunch of ‘assemblets’ to have up my sleeve for when I’m asked to do an assembly at the last minute. Here’s one I liked…

Send My Friend is a great campaign by Action Aid, getting young people to highlight the plight of the 72 million children who are missing out on education around the world. It’s campaigning at it’s most imaginative and it’s last project looks set to shoot into the Guinness Book of Records!