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Kenya Honored for “Character and Creativity Initiative”

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Word games, at school, Ulamba Orphanage, W. Kenya A Kenya-pioneered program that fosters a culture of compassion in schools and improves academic performance has been singled out for mention at this year’s Global Peace Convention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The innovative program, entitled the Character and Creativity Initiative, has been met with such success in Kenyan schools that it has begun to spread across the world.

The Character and Creativity Initiative (CCI), from LeadIn and the Global Peace Foundation, is a series of trainings and programs that aim to positively impact high school students by encouraging peace, understanding, and creativity in schools. First pioneered in six Kenyan schools in 2010, the program has since spread to 40 schools in Kenya, and has now reached schools in other parts of Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America.

American educationist and engineer Tony Divine oversaw CCI’s implementation in Kenya. According to him the Initiative encourages both teachers and students to adopt new values. He says that teachers who were previously impatient with unmotivated and underperforming students “understood them better” after the Initiative, and students who had been disengaged or troublemakers “earned fresh motivation that helped them engage in productive activities.”

According to LeadIn’s 2013 evaluation report on the Initiative, participating schools not only showed a positive change in students’ self-esteem and interpersonal relationships, but bullying and drug/alcohol abuse among students decreased and academic performance increased.

The Global Peace Convention, which honored CCI among its 1,000 delegates and organizations from 40 countries, this year hosted for the first time a Global Summit on Character and Creativity. CCI chair Professor Leah Marangu spoke to delegates at the Convention, describing CCI as a trait of Kenya’s “top schools.”

Schools that have adopted the Character and Creativity Initiative are reinventing the education system, she said, and “harnessing the hidden qualities of their teachers, students, and even parents.”

Creative Commons Love: Moving Mountains Trust on Flickr.com

Gambia Promotes Peace Education in the Classroom

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The Gambia: Girl and Boy Learn MathAdopting recommendations from the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), the government of the Gambia has initialized a plan to implement peace education in the classroom. Spokesman for the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Babucarr Bouy, has announced that the new Peace Education Program will teach peaceful values, with the intent to “foster students to be responsible citizens, open to other cultures, respectful of diversity, and committed to nonviolence.”

WANEP’s plan for peace education launched as a pilot program in 2000 in seven West African countries. In August 2013 the NGO released a school implementation guide for educators across the region.

In his official statement, Mr. Bouy noted that the Gambia’s adaptation of WANEP’s guide could not have come at a better time, as many West African countries have struggled with wars and conflict in recent years.

“This has led to an increase in vulnerable youths,” said Bouy. “Physical and psychological impacts [of violent conflict] generally affect children and young people.”

Maria Dacosta, WANEP’s board chair, also noted that “There is a growing concern that the exposure of our children and young people to violence has led to a pool of vulnerable youth whose worldview has been shaped and influenced by a culture of intolerance, radicalism, and violence with implication for future stability of the region.”

Peace education in the classroom is designed to prevent future conflicts by fostering a nonviolent culture in affected regions. In the Gambia, WANEP’s program will teach conflict resolution skills, nonviolent cultural values, and personal and community empowerment. Students and teachers will also address issues of racism, human rights, and gender equality.

According to Dacosta, children remain the best hope for a more peaceful future. When everyone understands the issues that lead to conflict, she says, and is empowered with adequate skills to resolve problems, lives by international standards of human rights, and respects individual and cultural diversity, “a culture of peace will be achieved.”

Creative Commons Love: Global Partnership for Education on Flickr.com

UN Declares Education a Priority for Peace

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Untitled On September 21, countries and people around the world observed this year’s International Day of Peace and the theme of “Education for Peace.”The United Nations marked this day with a call for further investment in education to teach the world’s children the values of tolerance and diversity as a first step towards addressing underlying causes of violent conflict around the world.

According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “it is not enough to teach children how to read, write and count. Education has to cultivate mutual respect for others and the world in which we live, and help people forge more just, inclusive and peaceful societies.”

Estimates predict that 57 million children throughout the world live without any access to education, while millions of others receive a substandard level of education. In recent years, conflicts like those seen in Syria, Mali, and the Central African Republic have increasingly contributed to this statistic. Currently, approximately 28.5 million children live in countries where persistent violence prevents them from attending school.

Although the need for educational aid continues to rise, funding has begun to drop. To address this growing problem, the UN Secretary-General developed the 5-year plan for Global Education First in 2012. This strategy, in combination with the Education Cannot Wait advocacy group, seeks to ensure that education becomes a primary objective within international development, with special attention paid to areas experiencing humanitarian crises.

Education provided to children living in extreme conditions of poverty and deprivation will not only help provide opportunities and support development, but it will also teach children the value of non-violence. These lessons have the potential to prevent future conflict and violence. As stated in UNESCO’s Constitution, “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

Creative Commons Love: Turkairo on Flickr.com

Hundreds of Afghan Children Travel To National Circus Festival

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TEDxKabulAfghanistan’s Mobile Mini Circus for Children (MMCC) hosted the annual week-long National Circus Festival in Kabul. About three hundred children traveled from seven Afghanistan provinces to participate in a juggling championship, street parade, photography contest, human pyramid, acrobatics, and other activities.

According to MMCC’s founder David Mason, the circus teaches children to cooperate and gives nutrients to the imagination. Mason explains “it’s a circus to educate, give meaning to life, make children happy, make them dream and realize their dreams and gain self-confidence and inspiration.”

18 year old juggler Murtaza Nowrozi from western province of Afghanistan said “left on the street, kids turn to bad things, becoming suicide bombers or street thugs. It’s better for them to go to school and join programs like this.”

MMCC partners with local organization the Afghan Educational Children’s Circus. Together they train volunteers, develop ideas, design performances for schools, refugee camps, international venues, and festivals. Since the program’s opening in 2002, they provided teaching for tens of thousands Afghan children and attracted an audience of 2.7 million people in 25 provinces.

Aside from circus-based festivals, MMCC also stage hour long educational performances covering the importance of hygiene, school attendance, landmine awareness, peace education, narcotics education, and malaria prevention.

Hundreds of Afghan boys and girls currently attend MMCC’s after-school circus practice in “funtainers;” shipping containers converted into mobile circus centers. Any child is welcome to join as long as a certain a certain grade point average is maintained.

Each show is also performed specific to various regions in Afghanistan; girls do not perform in eastern parts of the country while shows are enacted without music in ultra-conservative areas. Passages from the Koran are also recited prior to each performance. Mason said “We are doing things in a very Afghan and Islamic way. We are not trying to come up with new ideas unfamiliar to Afghans.”

Creative Commons Love: Shafiullah Ahmadzai on Flickr.com

West African Schools Encouraged to Add Peace Education to Curriculum

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Peace Baby!!!The Ghana-based NGO known as the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), has released a manual urging educators to add peace education to school curricula. The 56-page document entitled “Peace Education in Formal Schools of West Africa: An Implementation Guide” focuses on non-violent conflict resolution strategies for students, as a way to contribute to more peaceful cultures and nations in the future.

At the launch of the document, WANEP officials noted the need for a new way of thinking and dealing with conflict among West Africa’s young people. Professor Bocar Mousa Diarra, also the Malian Minister of Education, was involved in the manual’s launch and cited recent violence in Mali as an example of instability affecting the region.

Diarra recommended that teachers become involved in peacebuilding efforts among their students, in the hopes that schools would be at the center of efforts to attain peace in West Africa.

WANEP’s Executive Director, Emmanuel Bombande, noted the concern that violent conflict in West Africa would influence a generation of young people, and contribute to a worldview shaped by a culture of extremism, intolerance, and violence.

According to Bombande, this could negatively affect the future stability of the region, and peace education should be introduced into schools as an effort to counteract this. He said that learning nonviolent conflict resolution should be an essential life skill for students, and that this would contribute to more peaceful and tolerant societies in the future.

Outside of the new manual, WANEP’s overall peace education efforts in West Africa target primary and junior high school students. Their programs attempt to change cultural practices that contribute to violence, with the end goal of achieving sustainable peace across the region.

Creative Commons Love: Clyde Robinson on Flickr.com

Macedonia Gets a Lesson in Sports-Based Peacebuilding

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“Generations for Peace,” a Jordanian non-profit organization, in cooperation with its local partner “Let’s Get Up, Balkans,” held an advocacy event in Skopje, Macedonia, with the goal of introducing peace-building methods to the country’s teachers and parents.
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During the event, different value-based peace-building education and sports-based games and activities were presented to teachers from two Skopje schools and parents of the children attending those schools.

“Discussion was mainly focused on tolerance, understanding, and peace and how to use sports in education and everyday life to further promote these values. The idea is to bring children from all sides of this divided community and, through sports, install a sense of tolerance and respect in them by showing them common ground and shared values.”

A final product of the event was a survey and a feedback collection from the participants that will later be analyzed and used in the preparation of a series of summer camps for children in this community. Teachers who were present at the event will act as coordinators of the summer activities in the schools where they are working. Teachers and parents were equally impressed by the possibilities such advocacy programs could have for reconciliation in their communities. As one of the participants said, “Only people who are willing and ready to change their communities can actually create change.”

The event was led by Sanja Angelovska, a Macedonia native who is also a certified Generations For Peace Pioneer (trainer) and a masters degree student in conflict resolution.

Creative Commons Love: MojoBaer and vramak on Flickr.com