In a groundbreaking initiative to promote the holistic well-being of young children, Arigatou International with Sarvodaya Sharamadana Movement in Sri Lanka conducted a four-day facilitators’ workshop on the Toolkit “Nurturing the Spiritual Development of Children in the Early Years.”
Developed by the Consortium on Nurturing Values and Spirituality in Early Childhood for the Prevention of Violence, the Toolkit was launched in Rome in 2022. This comprehensive resource aims to equip faith actors, parents, caregivers, educators, and community members with the necessary tools to promote children’s well-being and address violence by nurturing spiritual development in the early years. Being the first-ever iteration of the Toolkit in Sri Lanka, this workshop demarcated the official launch of the program in the country. The program will be implemented with parents, caregivers, and Early Childhood Development (ECD) teachers in the next few months, with sustainability integrating itself into Sarvodaya Sri Lanka’s “Community Kitchen” initiative. Through this unique approach, the implementation partners are seeking to achieve a holistic development model that is built in the intersections of nutritional well-being and spiritual development of children in their early years.
A Transformative Approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD)
The four-day workshop, which ran from May 27th to 30th at the Sarvodaya Headquarters in Sri Lanka, was part of a global series following successful implementations in Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, and India. It brought together a diverse group of 15 professionals actively engaged in ECD and four Sarvodaya staff members dedicated to ECD programs, fostering an enriching environment for learning and collaboration. Participants were also affiliated with different ECD centers with diverse practices and experiences in children’s holistic development which allowed for a more engaging discussion and collaboration.
Mr. Damith Kulanayake, Executive Director of the Sarvodaya Shramadhana Movement, inaugurated the program by emphasizing the pivotal role of the early years in a child’s life and Sarvodaya’s commitment to supporting their holistic development. This sentiment resonated throughout the workshop as participants delved into the toolkit’s components, child rights, and the realities faced by children in Sri Lanka.
The first day’s activities set the stage by introducing self-reflective exercises, insightful discussions, and collaborative learning circles. These interactive sessions not only provided knowledge but also encouraged participants to explore their personal experiences and perspectives on child development.
The workshop also created a space for examining the concepts of holistic well-being, spiritual development, violence prevention and the multifaceted nature of spirituality itself. Participants enthusiastically shared their insights, drawing from their professional experiences and diverse religious backgrounds. These thought-provoking dialogues laid the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the Toolkit’s principles and their practical applications in their work environments.
During the workshop, participants addressed the importance of nurturing one’s own spirituality, fostering positive relationships between caregivers, educators, and children, creating safe environments, and empowering experiences for young learners. Participants were guided to understand their roles in championing children’s spiritual development and well-being.
The final day focused on applying the acquired skills and competencies through activity planning, country implementation strategies, and monitoring and evaluation tools. Participants designed and shared their approaches to take these learnings to their communities through practice sessions, receiving valuable feedback from the group.
Reflecting on this four-day journey, one participant mentioned, “For me, the most valuable characteristic of this workshop was the space it gave to understand our own sense of spirituality and the relationships we foster in life. Without realizing our own spiritual self and socio-emotional wellbeing, we are unable to attend to our children’s needs”.
Arigatou International staff members Mr. Suchith Abeywickreme, Program Lead – Ethics Education Fellowship, and Mrs. Hesha Perera, Manager – End Child Poverty Knowledge Center Sri Lanka, together with Sarvodaya Sri Lanka staff member Mrs. Malani Balasooriya, Manager – Early Childhood Development Section, conducted and facilitated the workshop, acting as the trainers for this intervention.
Sustaining the Impact in Sri Lanka’s Context of ECD
In a heartwarming closing ceremony, joined by Sarvodaya Sramadhana Movement’s President, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratna, and Executive Director, Mr. Damith Kulanayake; Dr. Ariyaratna expressed his confidence in the participants’ ability to convey the workshop’s learnings to parents, emphasizing the Toolkit’s strong conceptual foundation.
“The Toolkit was developed with extensive input from various individuals with a strong concept in its core. I trust you will effectively convey the learning outcomes of this workshop to the parents”, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratna mentioned. “This transformative workshop exemplifies the collaborative efforts of Arigatou International and Sarvodaya Sri Lanka to promote spiritual development and holistic education in early childhood. By equipping facilitators with essential tools and knowledge, we are paving the way for communities of care and support that nurture the well-being of Sri Lankan children from their earliest years,” he emphasized.
In the coming months, Sarvodaya Sri Lanka plans to mobilize the participants who underwent this training workshop to conduct community-level discussions, awareness-building activities, and content development to connect local stakeholders. This will be carried out through a program with 12 sessions for parents, caregivers, and ECD practitioners that will be delivered through monthly engagements.
As an approach to maintaining its sustained integration, they plan to work together with the ECD educators and center managers who are already collaborating with Sarvodaya through their “Community Kitchen” initiative which focuses on providing access to healthy and nutritious meals for children from underserved families. By integrating the Toolkit with this already existing intervention for children’s nutritional and physical well-being, Sarvodaya believes that the continuous engagement and collaboration between the teacher-parent communities will be nurtured and utilized in a complementary manner to support the holistic development of children.
As these change agents embark on implementing the Toolkit within their respective organizations, their efforts will undoubtedly contribute to creating a safer, more nurturing environment for young children, fostering their spiritual growth and protecting them from violence. This initiative represents a significant stride towards empowering early childhood educators and promoting the holistic development of Sri Lanka’s future generations.
The post Empowering Early Childhood Educators for Holistic Wellbeing and Spiritual Development of Children: The Official Implementation of the Toolkit in Sri Lanka appeared first on Ethics Education for Children.
"We have to keep in mind that children on the move are first and foremost children and their rights move with them!" Dr. Najat Maalla M’jid, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Violence against Children
A webinar series on Resilience and Children on the Move, took place from September to November 2021, gathering more than 350 participants in three sessions. Throughout the sessions, participants shared experiences and best practices to support, protect and nurture the physical, socio-emotional, and spiritual well-being of children on the move.
On 9 March 2021, Arigatou International Geneva’s Executive Director, Ms. Maria Lucia Uribe was invited to partake in an online webinar hosted by Shanti Ashram. The webinar was the third installment in a series called the Interactive Knowledge Update. This session, entitled The Rationale and Impact of Successful Convening, focussed on the concept of convening. Defined as the act of bringing people together, usually for a public purpose, convening has come to occupy a critical role for many international organizations.
“Everyone needs to be educated ‒ the leaders, the public, the children, the youth, the elite and the masses. Formal education as well as non-formal education has a great role to play in bringing about peace and disarmament in the present-day world. We are all members of one human family. United we stand and divided we fall.”
Dr. M. Aram,
Founder President, Shanti Ashram
With Dr. Aram’s words as a reference line for the discussions, the series of webinars titled “Leaders Dialogue – Active Peace Building for Community Cohesion in the Midst of COVID-19” kicked off on Tuesday, 22 July 2020. The Leaders Dialogue aimed at listening to one another and sharing notes from leadership experiences, guided by the premise that leaders multiply leaders. In unprecedented times like the COVID 19 Pandemic or in everyday encounters, such dialogue creates an environment of reflection, mutual learning and recommitment to action, active peacebuilding, and community cohesion.
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.
With the upcoming commemoration of the International World Refugee Day on sight, the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) organized on 18 June 2020 a webinar to discuss and explore ways to build trust to achieve a more inclusive society for people seeking refuge in Europe. The webinar was hosted by the Program of Social Inclusion of People Seeking Refuge in Europe and the Network for Dialogue.
Arigatou International had an enriching meeting to renew collaborations with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), on 22 August 2019 at the Vatican.
With a four-day Facilitator Training Workshop that took place from 12 to 15 August 2019, the Learning to Live Together Programme made its first introduction in Mexico, where until now the Programme was not adapted or used.
After running workshops in seven countries around the world, the pilots for the adaptation of the Learning to Live Together Programme to Middle Childhood came to an end after completing the three last pilots in Tanzania, in July, and in India and Ecuador in August 2019, and reaching a total of 250 children from several religious and ethnic communities and secular backgrounds.
Arigatou International, in close collaboration with UNICEF, the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children, the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) and with the support of partners, the International Dialogue Center (KAICIID) and World Vision International, will launch the first ever global study on Faith and Children’s Rights to honor the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), focusing particularly on the role of religious leaders and religious communities in promoting children’s rights and well-being and in preventing violence against children.
The study constitutes a valuable guidance for anyone who is committed to advancing the promotion of children’s rights: it provides a sound resource to support the efforts of religious leaders and religious communities to further expand their advocacy and action, mobilize new partners and engage even more deeply within their own faith communities to protect children from violence and promote their healthy development.
The study provides perspectives from seven religious traditions: the Bahá’í Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and the Sikh Faith. In total, these traditions have more than 5.5 billion adherents around the globe.
The multi-religious study highlights the often significant role that the diverse communities of the world’s faith traditions have played in the preparation, adoption, ratification and implementation of the CRC over the past three decades. It recognizes innovative work and good practices carried out every day to further children’s rights and contribute to child protection by religious groups as a means to carry out their mission. It also contains new ideas for collaboration and recommendations for further actions by all stakeholders, including fostering interreligious dialogue as a way to facilitate the protection and promotion of children rights.
Religious leaders and faith-based organizations are in a unique position to champion children’s rights, asserting their moral authority to make a difference in children’s lives. They command extraordinary influence and often serve as role models of compassion, solidarity and justice. They help to bridge differences, foster dialogue, and influence positive social and behavioral change.
At the same time, around the globe today and throughout history, there are, and have been, harmful practices and actions among religious communities that are deeply inconsistent with both the fundamental values of the world’s major religions and children’s rights. No religious teaching or tradition condones or justifies any form of violence against children.
The far-reaching influence of religious leaders and faith-based organizations is especially important as we address sensitive social and cultural norms that deny children their rights.
This study creates a unique and compelling opportunity to put faith into action and promote interfaith collaboration to revitalize the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, inspiring positive change for children, everywhere and at all times.
The study will be launched at the United Nations on 19 November with a panel discussion featuring high religious leaders, the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, the head of UNICEF Europe, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and representatives of the partner organizations. The panel will be followed by a Reception where children will officially hand over the study to religious leaders and provide recommendations to bring it into action in their communities.
For further information, contact
Arigatou International Geneva
E-mail: geneva(at)arigatouinternational.org
Phone: +41 22 734 94 10
The Learning to Live Together Programme (LTLT) has reached over 300 students and teachers in Sri Lanka and India over the past year, thanks to the efforts of facilitators Kaviya Balaguruswamy and Parthipan Palanisamy. The workshops in Sri Lanka were held in Colombo, Kilinochchi, and Nuwaraeliya, and in Coimbatore in India.
Arigatou International, in close collaboration with the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Violence against Children (SRSG) and other key partners, has initiated a study which consists of a review of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) from a multi-religious perspective. The primary authors of the study include distinguished academics specialized in the field of child’s rights, former chairpersons of the CRC Committee, as well as religious scholars from various faiths and backgrounds.
The Learning to Live Together (LTLT) Programme has reached around 55 students from Macedonia in the past year, thanks to the efforts and commitment of Ms. Irena Fejsko, English Teacher, and Ms. Arbana Pasholli, Psychologist at the “28 November Community High School”.
The International Consortium on Nurturing Values and Spirituality in Early Childhood for the Prevention of Violence against Children, which was launched in August 2018 by Arigatou International and its partners, is continuing its activities with a set of roundtables hosted by various members of the Consortium in different countries.
In February, Arigatou International – Geneva attended the World Innovation Summit for Education’s biennial, or WISE@Paris, which was held in Paris on 20-21 February 2019. WISE is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate, and purposeful action for new approaches to education, launched in 2009 by the Qatar Foundation.
Following the calls from our network of educators for the adaptation of the Learning to Live Together (LTLT) Programme to middle childhood years, Arigatou International – Geneva is continuing the two-year process of adaptation of the Programme. The first two pilots in this process took place in Lisbon, Portugal, 8-10 February, and Nairobi, Kenya, 18-23 February.
Les enseignants de 5 classes d'étudiants de l'Ecole Elémentaire d'Enseignement Interculturel de Paleo Faliro, Athènes, Grèce, ont utilisé deux activités du manuel Apprendre à Vivre Ensemble afin d'organiser des actions pour le 6 mars, Jour d'Action contre l'Harcelement et la violence à l'école et le 21 mars, Jour contre la Discrimination Raciale.
Un entrainement sur Apprendre à Vivre Ensemble a été organisé du 4 au 9 mars 2013 à Thimphu, Boutan.
Cet entrainement est unique, non pas parce qu'il a été fait dans le district du Kilimanjaro, mais parce que il a été organisé pour la première fois par un groupe de professeurs de sport.
