International Students’ Day GLOBAL CALL FOR ACTION
OBESSU (the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions) and ESU (the European Students’ Union) have a long history in defending School Student Rights and bringing forward initiatives that commemorate the struggles of many for a free quality education. In fact the International Students Day is one of this occation, and we invite you to read the history of the day and the reason why the 17th November was chosen as a date here.
Being school and university student activists we do not only wish to commemorate, but we also wish to transform that passion and that committment into a positive change and a new claim, never forgetting those who made history before us. Every year we do identify a topic that characterises the struggles on the International Students Day and this year we did not have to look far away to realise that we need to open a frank debate on the freedom to study connected to the freedom to move around a cosmopolitan world, keeping our rights as human beings, which are too often denied to many inside and outside Europe.
For this reason OBESSU and ESU opened a global call for actions called “Free to learn, free to move”. The call was first draften and sent out for consultation to a large number of student unions from all over the globe, then it was revised keeping in mind the different needs and the different contributions, with an effort in keeping each and every vision together. Now we send back the finalised version of the call together with a toolkit for actions. In the toolkit we tried to give some ideas of what could be done an how could it be done, but this day is a global day and the contexts are pretty different to only gather onto one main idea.
We invite you to disseminate the call, sign it and let individuals or organisations sign it.
We also invite you to join the Facebook event we wil create and post there your actions.
To make our voices heard, as well the voices of the many students we involve we would like to spread the word and use the hashtag #free2 to make everyone express their particuar and personal freedom wish. We attach as well a cover photo for facebook and the pictures with the main demands. You get 2 version of each image being one of them with a transparent background.
We hope you will act, build solidarity and commemorate the day in the way we can do it the best: being active defending students rights and stading for the protection of Human Rights and Dignity.
To sign the call please email [email protected]. Use the same email to share your ideas, your activities for the day and your reflections.
