Friday, 20^th February 2009.
Conakry- A workshop was organized from January 20 th to 22 nd, 2009 in Conakry by Plan Guinea in partnership with the Ministry of Pre-University, Technical, Professional and Civic Education to prepare the official launching of the campaign “Learn without fear”.

The main objective of the workshop is to define the theme of the campaign and prepare an action plan for three years.
Eighty people participated among them representatives from the Ministries of Education, Justice, Women Promotion/Children, Information/Culture, Civil Society, Labor Unions, UNICEF and several NGOs involved in children matters such as CCF, Save the Children, the PTAs, the secretary general of religious affairs,
the chairperson of the children’s parliament and the representatives of Conakry teachers and students/pupils, the network of Guinean Journalists for the promotion of child rights, representatives of children movements, association of children and young workers of Guinea and the media.

Several speeches were made including the Chairperson of the Guinean Children’s Parliament who praised Plan Guinea’s initiative and invited all the actors concerned at all levels to talk less and make concrete efforts in the process to emancipate children who are the leaders of tomorrow and execute all recommendations made during the workshop.

Three topics were discussed :

• Violence in schools : problems, sources, types and means to combat them
• Violence in schools: role of the media
• Violence in schools: schoolchildren, teachers and parents responsibilities

These topics were seriously debated and the central question was to identify the culprits of schools violence either from the family, or the society or the school. According to your past experiences and from the messages
from the 3 speakers and available documents, identify the type of violence that is most harmful to the child in his studies and the central topic of the campaign. Corporal punishment was identified as the central topic of the campaign “learn without fear” during the debates and within the groups of participants.

An action plan was adopted for three years to execute the campaign and the central topic
chosen for Guinea was “STOP CORPORAL PUNISHMENT”
During the closing speech, the Minister of Pre-University, Technical, Professional and Civic Education,
told the gathering that the Guinea Government should support the campaign “learn without fear”.

The Minister said that «In helping us to eradicate this growing scourge, Plan International is strengthening the government’s education program aimed to make “the Guinean schools an ideal place to learn without fear”. The campaign activities will start soon.

Hawa Camille CAMARA
Communications & PR Advisor