TWO Jamaican students – Oshin Gregory and Rasheeda Williams – will have their artwork on exhibition in Ontario Canada, to mark the commemoration of Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The students, who are winners in the Inner City Basic Services Project (ICBSP) Poster Competition, officially handed over their posters to the Canadian High Commissioner Denis Kingsley last Thursday. Kingsley took the opportunity to congratulate the children on their beautiful artwork and encouraged them to continue working hard and striving for their goals. He also said he was quite disheartened by the content of the posters as they illustrated some of the serious social ills that local children are victims of.

The poster competition was held under the theme, ‘How does crime and violence affect me?’.

Managing director of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund(JSIF), Scarlette Gillings, said the ICBSP poster competition is just one of many interventions the JSIF has been using to effect change in the 12 targeted communities under the ICBSP. She said the posters are just “snapshots of the harsh realities of many of our nation’s children”. She said JSIF will continue targeting these communities to effect real change.

The two posters will be on display in Canada as a part of an exhibition mounted by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Department for International Affairs and Trade (DFAIT). The display will be showing the importance of children’s rights and participation as a key aspect of the international human rights framework. Oshin and Rasheeda’s pieces will be two of many from children all over the world that are showcased under theme ‘Children have rights’.

The ICBSP is aimed at improving the social, economic and physical conditions of 12 communities through the provision of access to basic infrastructure, crime and violence prevention, access to micro-finance and tenure regularisation under a US$29.3 loan from the World Bank and counterpart funding of US$3.5 million from the Government of Jamaica.