April is the Month of the Military Child – a month where we champion our amazing, resilient children and young people from Armed Forces families. They can experience many challenges because they are from an Armed Forces family, and we are in awe of how brilliant they are.
This April, 2025, the MOTMC has a theme of ‘Memories’ – which could not be more appropriate for us here at the Naval Children’s Charity as we celebrate our bicentenary – 200 years of our own memories supporting our Naval children.
We would like you to help us celebrate you and our bicentenary by sharing with us your memories – be as creative as you like: write something, turn it into a poem, draw it, paint it, sculpt it or just send us a photo of you and your Armed Forces family that is a memory you cherish. With your permission we will share these on social media and our website as we celebrate throughout the month. More details coming soon…
Each year to celebrate we also come together with the Ministry of Defence, other military charities, schools, and many other partner organisations to celebrate military children and raise awareness of service life.
This year the theme is Memories and there will be many activities and events taking place across the country. Here’s just a taste of what we have planned so far…
Never Such Innocence – Creative School Workshops
We are really pleased to be partnering with Never Such Innocence to deliver school workshops across the UK that encourage and amplify the voices of service children.
Never Such Innocence have a team of creative practitioners who visit schools to hold workshops in poetry, art, speech and songwriting. The workshops provide young people with the creative tools to express their feelings and produce powerful pieces of work around the theme of conflict and service life.
The workshops are not just for military children, they are a great way for all children to learn about what military life looks like for their classmates and peers. In fact, we hope to reach schools who may have relatively small numbers of service children with these workshops so that the interaction can raise awareness of service life across the whole school community and create a lasting impact.
We still have a few school places remaining for 2025 so if you’re interested please email us at ncc@navalchildrenscharity.org.uk
Portsmouth Community Planter – Victoria Park
Working in partnership with Aggies and Pompey Military Kids, we have secured a community planter space in the recently revamped gardens of Victoria Park, Portsmouth. Award winning garden designer and mental health advocate, Leigh Johnstone (also known as The Beardy Gardener!) will be working with the children and young people to design and ‘plant up’ the space. We intend for this to be an ongoing project, with the children regularly updating the space with seasonal decorations and maintaining the plants.
Find out more and sign up to Pompey Military Kids here.
Purple Up! Day – 25th April 2025
Inspired to get involved in Month of the Military Child? 25th April is ‘Purple Up! Day’.
Wear purple to show your support for Service children and remember to use the hashtag #MotMC if posting on social media.
Find out more about other MotMC activities and other ways to get involved here.
Keep an eye on our socials for further updates and developments!
