News for Kidz™ is specifically designed to involve children aged 5 to 15 yrs., in the activity of making news, reading news, and writing news.

It is possibly one of the only sites on the internet designed specifically for news about kidz. The site welcomes contributions from children, about the events in their daily lives: both usual and unusual.

• Purpose
• Benefits to Children
• Benefits to Teachers and Parents
• Two components
• Commitment
• Webmaster/Editor
• Why News for/about Kidz?
• UNICEF’s The State of the World Children 2003

The purpose of this site is two-fold:

1. To help today's children become aware of the world around them; specifically by reading and sharing news about other children in their neighborhood and around the world. In other words, news about children.
2. To encourage children to discern aspects of their own lives and the lives of their friends and classmates, which are worth sharing, to promote further awareness in other children. In other words, news by children.

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The benefits to children include:

1. A multi-cultural awareness that can foster knowledge and understanding of people all over the world, having far-reaching benefits through their adult life.
2. Developing skills: reading, essay-writing
3. Enhancing vocabulary
4. Getting exposed to different writing styles
5. Becoming more knowledgeable about the world in which children live.
6. The thrill of seeing their work acknowledged.
7. The opportunity of a wide audience for their work.
8. The opportunity of making pen pals if allowed by the adults in their lives.

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Benefits to teachers and parents include:

1. An activity in which children and parents can participate weekly
2. An information resource for teachers of language and social studies.
3. A place to further their own understanding of other cultures. This will help the citizens of tomorrow to use cultural relevance in their dealings with others. Cultural relevance is a subject growing among medical practitioners, among others.

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There are two components to News for Kidz™:

1st. A website, called News for Kidz ™ which is updated monthly with original articles, stories, letters, replies to quizzes, creative writing or artwork sent in by children.
To help them to write, a weekly QuickQuestion™ is sent out through email each week. See past QuickQuestions™ here https://www.angelfire.com/realm2/newsforkids/question.html
http://www.newsforkidz.com/

2nd. A weekly email newsletter NewsBites for Kidz ™, e-mailed out to those who sign in. This has news from worldwide news sources, handpicked for relevance to children in this age group. A digest of children's news from the media, where Kidz are the focus of the news. The news is from different sources, all acknowledged, and accessible over the internet so it’s easy to get further details, and cover different countries of the world. The newsletter is completely free of charge; it can be subscribed through subscribe@newsforkidz.com. The focus is on everyday or heroic acts; tragedies may be mentioned, but in a way that doesn't overly disturb children.

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OUR COMMITMENT:

NEWS FOR Kidz IS A WEBSITE THAT IS SAFE FOR CHILDREN. CHILDREN'S INFORMATION IS KEPT PRIVATE, AND NO EMAIL ADDRESSES ARE GIVEN OUT.

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About the Editor/Webmaster, Meenakshi Suri:

Having lived and brought up children, in countries in the East and West, and with friends and relatives from different countries, there is a deep interest and awareness of, and experience with multiple cultures. Experiences as a psychologist, qualitative researcher, teacher, humanist, writer and counselor, have given a depth of experience with people in different countries.

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Why News for/about Kidz?

Children have become a remarkable force in today's world. Whether in traditional roles of child labor or newer ones as centers of their parents' lives, children are widely recognized as a force in the worlds of consumerism and education.

On the other hand, technology and globalization are bringing about rapid changes in society. It is the rare parent whose child will have a life similar to theirs. It is difficult to predict what the world will be like when today's children become adult.

The need for children to develop awareness about the world was never greater. Current world events forcefully bring this out.

How do we know about the world in which we live? There are two main sources:

Personal experience and the experience of those around us Media.

Personal experience is limited in scope; and media has notoriously limited its reporting of global events, to more visible and sensational elements. This can lead to a loss of hope for the future, a feeling of imminent danger and anomie.

Are things really better or worse? Is the world really such a bad place? To find out, I started the News for Kidz website last year. It's for children all over the globe, to share their interesting and diverse lives with each other, their hopes, dreams, or problems they face, their special challenges and solutions.

By reading the news and sharing their own, the Kidz are helped to understand how media works, learn from each other, share the everyday and extraordinary events in their lives, learn what Kidz in different places and circumstances like and do and fear and enjoy; AND they learn to express themselves in written language.

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" Each generation is faced with new challenges — listening for and to the views of children is one of ours. The State of the World’s Children 2003 is about child participation. It focuses on the responsibility of adults to seek out the perspectives and opinions of children and to take their viewpoints seriously, and to help children and adolescents develop their competencies for authentic and meaningful participation in the world. Child participation entails the act of encouraging and enabling children to make their views known on the issues that affect them. Put into practice, participation involves adults listening to children — to all their multiple and varied ways of communicating, ensuring their freedom to express themselves and taking their views into account when coming to decisions that affect them."

From the UNICEF press kit http://www.unicef.org/sowc03/presskit/summary.html

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