Teachers from around the UK came to Royal Wootton Bassett Academy this week, for a two-day conference on empowering children.

Expert speakers talked about how they motivated people to become passionate about campaigning and social justice issues with a view to encouraging teachers to inspire and empower children to change the world.

One of the keynote speakers was Adrian Lovett, Europe executive director of ONE, a group which forms part of the Make Poverty History campaign and sponsored this year’s conference.

He said: “The conference has been all about how we empower children to change the world, and not in a cliched kind of way but how they can actually create change. At ONE we have a long history of bringing about change.

“It’s the children that were born around the millennium, who are 13 or 14 now, who we need to inspire now to find their voices and create change, and that’s happening in Wootton Bassett, it’s happening in Berlin and in Nairobi, all over the world.

“Our work, for instance, with the Make Poverty History campaign, is based around facts. For instance in terms of the debt it works out that for every £1 that we were giving African countries they were paying £3 back in interest, and many people thought that this wasn’t right.”

The conference was organised by Royal Wootton Bassett Academy in partnership with the Institute for Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education.