UK school takes part in UN videoconference
Students at Sheldon School in Wiltshire will today, 26 March 2010, take part in a videoconference organised by the United Nations HQ in New York to discuss the impact of the slave trade. Sheldon School is a member of UNESCO Associated Schools in the UK and will be joined by members of UNESCO Associated Schools in the Gambia, Ghana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.
Watch a recording of the video conference here.
The videoconference will be opened by Kiyo Akasaka, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. This is the 3rd annual videoconference organised by the UN and this year's theme is “Expressing Our Freedom Through Culture”. All the participating students have explored the impact of the slave trade on the culture of enslaved Africans and how it influenced the culture of the countries they lived in once they were freed.
Read more about the video conference on the UN website here.
The students from Sheldon School have researched and prepared a presentation on the theme “The Contribution of Freed Slaves to British Culture”. The students said:
we are very excited to taking part in an experience that will be truly international and interactive we've never done anything like this before’.
Talking about what they had learnt during the research, the students said:
without the influence of the freed victims of the transatlantic slave trade on culture, religion, education, music, food and politics Britain would be half the country it is today."
The event coincides with the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade and some of the participating students are travelling on a replica of the Amistad which is retracing the Slave Trade Route. The Amistad will be in Havana, Cuba on 26 March where students on the ship will participate in the live videoconference. In 1839, slaves aboard a ship called the Amistad revolted to secure their freedom while being transported from one Cuban port to another. The slaves had been kidnapped mostly from the neighbourhood of the Colony of Sierra Leone and sold to Spanish slavers. They eventually received their freedom in 1841, after two years' internment in the United States.
Written: 26/03/2010 , last modified: 30/03/2010
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Students at Sheldon Sixth Form