JEDDAH – The first Saudi TV channel dedicated to educating children about their rights in society will start broadcasting this month.
Sana, the new satellite channel which will broadcast in Arabic 24 hours a day from Cairo, will feature cartoons and songs designed by international child behavior specialists in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Information’s Children’s Rights Awareness campaign.
The campaign, which began three years ago, aims to use the media to make children and the general public aware of the 10 basic rights of all children.
“Sana will be the first Arab TV channel to broadcast songs and cartoons to explain Arab children’s rights,” said the channel’s director in Jeddah, Mohammed Al-Aggad.
The Children’s Rights Awareness campaign has identified 10 basic rights of all children, namely, growth and development, respect for the child’s identity and culture, rest and leisure time, access to appropriate financial conditions, the right of disabled children to live a happy life, the right to housing, education, to express their opinions, the right to care and guidance, and health care.
The cartoon characters broadcast by the new TV channel will be designed by child development specialists under the supervision of the campaign personnel to provide children with a representation of the ideal child having good behavior and who integrates and interacts positively with society and with other children.
According to Al-Aggad, Sana will broadcast 10 different songs daily each focusing on an educational message. All cartoons and songs will employ a simplified form of the Arabic language with easy to understand words so that even very young children will be able to understand the message they contain.
“The new TV channel will complement the job being done by the nation’s schools and it will act as a bridge between public education and the media which will help spread the awareness of children’s rights,” said Al-Aggad.
According to Azza Abubakur, a sociologist at King Abdulaziz University, Arab societies lack a professional way to teach children correct social behavior and such easy to understand songs and cartoons will be of enormous benefit.
“Children and their families in the Arab World do not know the real meaning of children’s rights which is why such TV channels can help spread the message,” Abubakur added.
The Ministry of Culture and Information started the Children’s Rights Awareness campaign to reduce the increasing number of cases of violence against children in Saudi Arabia.
The new channel will also use songs and cartoon stories to spread awareness of social and behavioral issues in general, such as, rationalizing the use of electricity and water by teaching children about the importance of water and how to benefit from it; protecting health and safety by broadcasting warning messages about the danger of using medicine without visiting a doctor; and preserving the environment by teaching children the importance of keeping their surroundings clean.
Sana, a company founded more than 10 years ago for the production of songs and cartoons for distribution to TV and radio, is well known for children’s programs, such as, The child and the sea, Spring love, and The return of Layla, which won the Gold Award for children’s drama in the Cairo Festival for Radio and Television. – SG