About the Lecture Series


“How to Love a Child”, the Janusz Korczak Lecture Series, is devoted to key issues crucial to the well-being and rights of children and young people today.

The goal of the lecture series is to foster conversations among academics, professionals and child advocates from diverse fields concerned with the welfare of the child. We hope that the lectures and panel discussions will provide fertile ground for a fruitful exchange of ideas and approaches to improving the situation of young people in all spheres of society.

A range of disciplines and expertise including law, medicine, child welfare and education are represented in this series, and a variety of perspectives and issues will be addressed.

Lectures are offered in the spirit of Dr. Janusz Korczak, a pioneer in child advocacy, a relentless fighter for children’s rights, and a worldwide symbol of commitment to the welfare of children and youth. The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is informed and inspired by his theories, and Korczak’s native country of Poland was a lead nation in the drafting and adoption of the UNCRC. His work and writings as a paediatrician and director of orphanages for 30 years have become inextricably connected with both the theory and the practice of child care and education and his book title, How to Love a Child, serves as the theme for this series.

Many speakers and panelists in the lecture series are long time champions of children’s rights themselves. The lecture series involves representatives from the Faculty of Education, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Faculty of Arts at UBC, the University of Victoria, McGill University, and the BC Children’s Hospital, and includes contributions from the BC Representative for Children and Youth, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth of Ontario, First Nations activists, a member of the Canadian Senate, and many other prominent Canadian children and youth rights activists, including children and youth.

Jerry Nussbaum
President
The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada