Heading for the summit

`Our lives are much better than our parents lives were and our children's lives will be better again. Life is just always getting better" - such is the optimism of the children of fifth class, Scoil Cholmcille, Duleek, Co Meath, who are preparing to fly over to Paris to represent Ireland at the annual Children's Summit.

The class was chosen by competition from 100 entries on the subject of nutrition. Their entry was a tabloid format newspaper called The Daily Chews. This year's summit theme is Growing Up, and despite the issues covered by the class - from genetically modified vegetables to BSE - the children are looking forward to adulthood. Big houses, money, more and more labour-saving devices and working as an astronaut or a Formula One driver are all in store for the newspaper's editor Francesca O'Leary and the members of her staff who had time to give The Irish Times a quick interview - farming editor James Commons, arts and leisure editor Kate McGuinness and green veg correspondent Christopher Meyler.

"In our parents' day there was no central heating and school was very bad, although sweets were cheaper", they say. "When we become parents we'll let our children go to the shop on their own. You'd have to be a bit cross now and again, but we wont smack our kids, or shout at them. We'd give them more trust than we get."

Altogether there will be 600 children from 50 countries at the summit which takes place in Disneyland Paris, and is organised by UNESCO and Disney Magazines and promoted in Ireland by Disney Publishing and The New Red House School Book Club. Mary Hanafin is the teacher who worked with the class on their winning project.

"We heard about the competition through our membership of the book club", she says. "We really enjoy doing projects at the school and this one seemed very interesting. We had a choice of doing a poster or a newspaper based on nutrition. I decided to go with a newspaper because that would give the children more of an opportunity for team work.

"We went to visit the local paper, where the children were shown how a paper is put together. They had all sorts of ideas themselves about food and nutrition; they did the research themselves, and wrote up the articles themselves.

"They were really excited when they heard they had won. But they thought they had won some books. They couldn't believe it when they heard they had won a trip to Disneyland in Paris. It will be a wonderful experience for them. They'll meet children from all over the world, and we would hope to organise pen pals, maybe even twin with a school from another country. We'll be taking geography out of the classroom and onto the streets of Paris, and hopefully they'll get a chance to practice their French. Each country had a different theme related to growing up for its project and they'll all be distributing information about their project so they get to learn something from one other."

This is the summit's fifth year. The children will debate ideals on how they would like their world to develop in the future and decide on a single message or a Kids Call to Action relevant to the summit theme. They will present this message to UNESCO, which will distribute it to its member states, the United Nations and world leaders. The children will also attend workshops, two of which will be facilitated by Senator George Mitchell.

Meanwhile, the children of Duleek have to contend with the daily discrimination of being a child. "When you go into some shops, if you're first in a queue, an adult just gets served before you", says James Commons. They all agree that the voting age is ridiculous and should be lowered to ten although the current politicians wouldn't get a look in. "If they had a child who was good and who was interested in equal rights for children, I'd vote for him", says James.