The below article has been written by Sharon Brooks at Busy Bees at Everton
One child every five minutes dies from violence. That’s why, in the month of October, our Busy Bees at Everton Service engaged the children in the Polished Man campaign, which asks men to paint one fingernail to help raise awareness and end violence against children.
This is a campaign that our team at Everton were passionate about because, as their motto quotes, “it shouldn’t hurt to be a child.” Being in the Early Learning industry, we advocate for the care and development of each and every child. We want our children to feel safe and loved every single day, and to create a safe space for every Family.
At Busy Bees at Everton, we took the opportunity to ignite conversations about the Polished Man campaign and what it stands for by inviting the children to polish one nail. We also advertised the campaign to all our stakeholders by having posters, literature and polish pots dotted around the room and inviting others to participate, should they wish to.
We also explained to the children the relevance of painting just one nail…
“How many fingers do we have on one hand?” Miss Sharon asked the children.
“Five!” they declared
“That’s right. So let’s pretend your five fingers are little children. If you painted one finger nail this would be one child that wasn’t very happy and is hurting. How does this make you feel?”
“Angry”, “Very, very sad”, “Not fair” were just a few of the replies.
The children engaged further on how we can tell the world this is not fair and we can tell others how we feel about it, and should we do that?
“Yes, it’s not nice for children not to have fun, like me” was a heartfelt and beautiful response from one of the children.
When the children saw their Tennis coach walk in at that moment, they were super keen to ask him if he wanted to paint his nail too.
“What is it for?” he asked.
Little J said “this is my little children, this one here (pointing to his painted nail), is an unhappy one because these are hurting him (pointing to the finger next to it)! We don’t want that to happen.”
Not quite the message, but they were listening and understood the concept that it is not okay to hurt and children deserve the right to be happy, loved and cared for.
To learn more about Polished Man, please visit: https://polishedman.com/
