Ms. Maria Lucia Uribe, Executive Director of Arigatou International Geneva was invited to contribute to the Week of Prayer and World Fellowship, which took place from 8 to 14 November 2020.
Since 1904, the Young Woman's Christian Association (YWCA) and the Young Man's Christian Association (YMCA) have traditionally come together to deliver the World Week of Prayer and World Fellowship. This year, the Week extended an invitation to communities to use biblical text to shed light on the lived experiences of those affected by the global pandemic. These contributions were compiled into a booklet entitled Rays of Hope: Creating Resilient Communities Through Practical Spirituality, which can be accessed here.
For a third consecutive year, Arigatou International Geneva participated at the Geneva Peace Week, which has held online from 2 to 6 November 2020. This year's theme was "Rebuilding trust after disruption: Pathways to reset international cooperation" with the aim of galvanizing leadership, building trust, and working towards international collaboration in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The International Consortium on Nurturing Values and Spirituality in Early Childhood for the Prevention of Violence is developing a toolkit on the spiritual development of children in the early years to foster their well-being and help prevent violence in child upbringing. The toolkit seeks to provide faith-based actors with concrete guidance, tools and examples about how to work with faith communities to nurture the spiritual development of children as well as to contribute to the prevention of violence in early childhood. The ultimate goal of this toolkit is to contribute to children’s holistic development and well-being.
Due to the high demand for the online course Ethics Education for Children: A Transformative Pedagogy for Learning to Live Together held in June 2020, the Geneva office decided to offer a second round of the course in English as well as in Spanish, adapted to the Latin America and Caribbean region.
More than 1,700 children, youth, and adults from diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds got together at the GLOBAL WEEK of Faith in Action for Children, held online from 16 to 20 November 2020. The GLOBAL WEEK was organized by Arigatou International, in collaboration with UNICEF, Religions for Peace, Shanti Ashram, World Vision International and KAICIID; and with the support and participation of 64 global, regional, and local partners.
