This page links to Worldpeacefull and School Programs.
Workshop Focus:
The REAL HOPE program is a values based, peace nonviolence and anti-bullying program. REAL HOPE is an acronym for: Responsibility, Empathy, Awareness, Love, Honesty, Oneness, Peace and Enjoyment. REAL HOPE is a program where life skills, emotional intelligence, positive psychology and peaceful behaviours are developed and integrated over a 8 week program. The children develop an understanding and experience of peace through brainstorming and critical thinking, humour (positive thinking), philosophy (inquiry), experiential activities (integration), stimulatory materials (DVD, audiovisual, props), meditation (visualisation, calm) and reflections in the home environment to integrate peaceful values as real life skills to produce peaceful behaviours.
Target Audience:
Grades 4,5,6 (program is adaptable for Secondary on request)
Duration:
55 minute session x 8 weeks
Expected Outcomes:
Children will develop pro-social behaviour, heightened emotional intelligence, an awareness of choices between division and unity, how values affect what they see and how they treat others and that when we all work peacefully together we can experience happiness and a shared sense of community. It is expected that peaceful behaviours will deepen and bullying will reduce as a result of raising awareness and understanding, developing strategies, integrating values and the resultant empowerment.
Link to a REAL HOPE Program page
Values based education aims to bring real happiness to children in times where they feel fearful and disconnected from who they are. Happiness is critical for peace in our world, otherwise children become disconnected and indifferent to each other. Depression, anxiety and stress arise when children feel powerless and lose the sense of real meaning in their lives.
Dr Patch Adams and Peaceful travelled to Russia. It was on this journey that the power of happiness reconnected those who had been abandoned in orphanages or seen as “less” valuable given disabilities. Patch doesn’t see better than or less than, he sees everyone as unique. He has spent his life teaching happiness to teams of clowns and children reminding people to laugh at life, to be a Fool and to re-member why laughter is the best medicine for a healthy, happy world.
Education programs that focus on happiness, laughter, building values and friendship are the very sustainability that ensures a peaceful world that not only survives but thrives.
