- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 12 2005 01.30 BST
Schoolchildren have been trading in facts. Rather than gossip about who snogged whom and what's no 1, they've been swapping knowledge about poverty. A child dies every three seconds. One hundred million children don't go to school. Two-thirds of them are girls.
These figures are ingrained in the minds of the 17 pupils who attended Unicef's C8 conference and the 95 at the Department for Education and Skills's J8 conference in Scotland last week. Both brought children together to tackle the same issues being discussed at Gleneagles and come up with a plan of action - then to shout about it as loudly as possible so the G8 leaders might listen to the people for whom they ought to be changing the world.
Among the pupils at the J8 conference was Eracelma Gasper, 15, part of a delegation from Langdon school in east London. "Basically, Tony Blair should listen. The first thing to do is just listen to the people [in Africa] that need help. Listen to what they want. Try not to take over too much, but help them to be independent. Help them to make things and create things and shape development for themselves," she says.
Some of the people she wanted Blair to listen to attended the C8 summit, held 12 miles from Gleneagles in a hotel in Dunblane. Unicef, which ran the event, brought together pupils from G8 countries and the developing world - including Bhutan, Lesotho and Cambodia - to come up with a communique for the summit.
Drame Aiissatou, 17, came from the Republic of Guinea. Her parents sent her to live with an uncle there when the war broke out in Sierra Leone. He didn't send her to school because it was too expensive. She watched every day as her cousins went off with their school bags. So she decided to leave home, some time, she guesses, between the age of 10 and 11.
She tells her story via a translator, pausing to choose her words carefully, then pouring them out with a staccato of fist punches to make her point. First she worked as a domestic servant, earning less than £3 a month. A friend brought her to an association supported by Unicef, where she learned to read and write.
She smiles when she is asked why she was so driven to get an education. "It's very important for a child to go to school. I had this dream I would learn to read and write. Today I feel well because I can read and write and I have my own job. My friends are not better than me."
Drame has more than just a job. She rose to become president of the association, and is now also president of the youth parliament in Guinea. She also owns her own business, designing and making embroidered sheets. She gives other young women work and earns £6 for each sheet, which takes two days to make.
But ask her about her first impression of the UK and the grown-up exterior drops for a moment. "The first day I arrived here, they gave me sweets and chocolate," she says. "The children here are so well; they are free in their minds. I'm dreaming of this way of life. In my country, you just get water."
Shetal Patel, 15, was a pupil at Langdon until her parents emigrated to New Jersey in the spring. In February, she featured in Education Guardian when she addressed the crowd in Trafalgar Square at a Make Poverty History rally. She met Nelson Mandela, who gave her his white armband, the symbol of the movement, to pass on to G8 leaders. "I promised him I would," she says. "So I flew back to Britain to do it. Mandela made me interested in politics. He was a very nice man and it was a very important moment in my life."
Unfortunately, she didn't get to keep her promise and go to Gleneagles to deliver the band. Instead she took to the stage with the C8 pupils at Murrayfield stadium and gave it to Davina McCall, who promised to pass it on; 50,000 people witnessed the promise and cheered as Shetal told her story.
Vince Doherty, a teacher from Langdon who accompanied pupils, says that, apart from changing the world, his pupils are benefiting personally from being involved in campaigns such as Make Poverty History. "It's great for self esteem and building up confidence. Some kids can say they have eight GCSEs. These kids can say they've got eight GCSEs, have been to the G8, and met Nelson Mandela."
Last week was an unusual week for the school - a delegation of pupils was also part of the London 2012 Olympics bid in Singapore - but Doherty believes the ideas they are talking about are not that unusual. Pupils around the country have been galvanised by the events of this year. "It comes naturally to young people to care about the world," he says.
The Send my Friend to School campaign saw pupils around the world, including those at thousands of schools in the UK, make more than 3 million "buddies", cardboard cut-outs bearing messages for the G8 leaders, asking them to improve school attendance in the developing world. Some 4,000 British schools applied to take part in the J8 conference.
Tony Breslin, chief executive of the Citizenship Foundation, says there is a new momentum in schools. "Certainly the build-up to G8 has, I think, seen an unprecedented level of interest from young people in global political affairs. Make Poverty History, Live 8, but also the tsunami before that, have all made them think. I can't remember there being more interest.
"Young people are coming into school talking about these issues. That gives teachers a starting point." You could add to that list of issues the demonstrations over the Iraq war, when pupils all over the country walked out of school to take part. And after the bomb attacks on London last week, you might add the threat of terrorism, too.
As the pupils in Scotland were immersed in their discussions last week, a high-level seminar at 11 Downing Street was pondering a study of more than 800 young people by Nestlé, Mori and the Economic and Social Research Council, which showed today's pupils are active citizens. Some 64% had given money to the tsunami appeal, 30% were volunteers in their community and 7% had marched against the Iraq war. Just under 50% said following political issues was part of being a good citizen and 48% said peaceful protest was important, though just 21% saw joining a political party as an element in positive citizenship.
Breslin, who attended that seminar, says: "We have young people widely interested and involved in community issues and voluntary work and single- issue politics. What we also have is a lack of interest and engagement in formal politics. They are interested in raw politics and issues. That's not translating into formal politics.
"If young people are interested in things like G8, we would want it to encourage them to become more interested in formal politics, too. The 60s children did that. We've yet to see if this generation will too. But if we miss this opportunity to engage them in politics, we could lose them forever."
Doherty says this shouldn't be seen as the pupils' problem. "There's a message here for the politicians. They have to listen and be clever about their aims."
But he also thinks that the movement is not dissimilar to the CND, anti-apartheid and anti-Nazi movements he was involved with in the 60s. "If we go back 40 years to the CND, we had the same mishmash of groups - Quakers, Anglicans, Labour party and liberals - all together. Once you get young people thinking, actually thinking, about their rights and responsibilities, then you are nearly there."
In Edinburgh, the pupils were also talking about the pockets of violent protest that surrounded the Gleneagles summit - and condemning the rioting. Jack McConnell, Scotland's first minister, speaking from the C8 conference, told Education Guardian: "I don't believe that any of the people involved [in violent demonstrations] yesterday could look those children in the eye and say what they did was in their interests."
But Breslin says even the violent demonstrations that were broadcast from Edinburgh should promote debate in the classroom about what constitutes democracy, and could even promote interest in formal political channels.
Some of the pupils at J8 who delivered their plans to the prime minister already show a canny eye for politics. Stewart Ritchie, 16, from Wallace high school, says: "The prime minister asked me what I felt was the most important thing that they could do, and I said they must work together. I meant that in order for them to accomplish their goals, they have to cooperate with each other and reach some form of compromise. We know that the Americans don't want to commit to the climate change goals. I've no idea how to overcome that, but that's Mr Blair's job."
For other pupils in Scotland last week, there were poignant lessons. Shuena Mohammad, 15, from Langdon, says: "I now know I'm lucky for what I have. I have to take my education seriously because there are people who want what we have and don't have it. If I'm doing good at school, I know that the pupils in Africa I have learned about have motivated me."
Communiques to G8
From C8
· End poverty now
· Make quality education free for all
· Protect all children better against violence
· Improve democracy and create children's commissioners in every country
· Introduce free HIV/Aids treatment for all people
· End child labour
· Improve sanitation, ensure clean water for all and adopt the Kyoto protocols
· Cancel debt and promote free trade to give all people the economic means to access health care and food
From J8
· Introduce taxes on flights and industrial CO2 producers and plough revenue into improved transport and energy research
· Use an incentive scheme to reward consumers who live environmentally friendly lifestyles
· Adopt an international symbol for products that have been manufactured in an environmentally friendly way
· Make it a law that all new buildings have their own renewable energy sources
· Find the money to meet the millennium development goals of improving access to free education, reducing maternal mortality and fighting HIV/Aids
· Fund a partnership programme to train key workers - doctors, nurses, teachers and administrators - in Africa
· Promote good governance in Africa and work to reduce corruption
· Establish a fund to help local businesses in Africa
