Students visiting a BMI fair in Brazil last month were offered fictitious study abroad options by children’s charity UNICEF, in order to highlight the struggles young people face in other parts of the world.
As part of a promotional campaign,UNICEF created an agency booth at the fair in Sao Paulo and offered students fictitious programmes overseas to see how they would react.
“But this is the reality of children in many parts of the world. It happens to them all the time, they live this on a day to day life”
Students were offered various trips including a chance to go abroad and be kidnapped, or to experience life as a guerrilla, by actors in the disguise of salespeople.
“They were really the sort of things they had invented and the idea is that for [the students] it was a shock,” president and CEO of BMI, Samir Zaveri, told The PIE News. “But this is the reality of children in many parts of the world. It happens to them all the time, they live this on a day to day life.”
Child violence and trafficking have been prominent themes of past campaigns by UNICEF. Its End Violence campaign, which called on governments around the world to commit to keeping children safe in the lead up to the adoption of new global development goals in September 2015.
The goals, which set out the world’s priorities for the next 15 years, includes for the first time ever a target to end violence against children.
Double sided mirrors at the back of the booth allowed for it all to be filmed as part of the campaign, which will be made into a promotional video, and is expected to launch in around a month’s time, according to Zaveri.
He also added that BMI is planning to work with UNICEF again in the future.
“We are actually planning and we have been discussing about working with them,” he said. “It’s a very important organisation, they do amazing work.”
