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Degrassi Wiki

The Degrassi Kids Rap On Rights is a 1989 video produced by Playing With Time Inc. in co-operation with UNICEF to coincide with the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Presented by Amanda Stepto, the video features cast members and extras from Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High gathered in the school cafeteria rapping about children's rights, explaining each of the three P's: Protection, Provision, and Participation. The video also features three actors recalling their experiences as young refugees.

Released only to educational institutions in Canada, the ten-minute video remained unavailable to view online in any capacity aside from a seconds-long clip featured in a documentary, with only one physical copy confirmed to exist in an Ontario university library, and passing mentions in written works. As a result, it was considered lost media until 2022, when a bootleg recording of the video from the aforementioned library was taken and given to the Degrassi Preservation Server on Discord. A directly digitized version is said to be coming soon.

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Until the screen-recorded footage surfaced in November 2022, eight seconds of the video had been available online, courtesy of a CTV documentary titled The Degrassi Story that aired on September 14, 2005. The clip shows Dayo Ade (BLT) introducing himself to the beatboxing of L. Dean Ifill (Bronco). The clip played during a scene where Dayo and Stefan Brogren briefly reminisced about the video.

Two publicity photographs also exist of the video, both discovered prior to the actual video surfacing. One was discovered in the July section of a 2022 calendar by Degrassi Tour (a business run by Pat Mastroianni). The second appeared inexplicably in September 2022 in an Instagram post by Toronto-based merch company Retrokid during the promotion of a Degrassi collab.

The video was likely filmed around the time the Degrassi High episode Sixteen, as Amanda Stepto is seen in one of the two stills wearing a DIY UNICEF shirt, which she also wore in the aforementioned episode.

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