Participants: A group of 40+ capable adults were selected by the organizers to be the future “multipliers” of the methodology. These included schoolteachers, special education teachers, skilled educators, family members, and key persons from various ministries and programs involved in children’s development, learning, health and well-being.

Activities

  • Discussion of the contrasting roles of schooling: the typical authoritarian approach which functions as an instrument of social control, and a participatory, problem-solving approach designed to help children think for themselves and work together as agents of change.

  • Role-plays to explore the differences between authoritarian bossy teachers, and teachers who relate to students in a friendly, empowering way.

  • Digital slide presentations of key Child-to-Child activities, from our experience in Sinaloa, Nicaragua and elsewhere, with emphasis on:

    • Simple, graphic, inclusive approaches to community diagnosis of important health-related problems;

    • Activities exploring common health problems of young children, and important health-protective skills that school-aged children can learn;

    • Awareness-raising games and activities to encourage acceptance and inclusion of children who are disabled or in other ways different.

    • Hands-on practice of some of the above activities, with discussion and plans for how the participants in this Day 1 Workshop would facilitate similar activities with groups of school children, including some disabled children, the following day (Day 2).

Goals of the Morelia Child-to-Child Workshop

The purposes of the workshop emerged from an underlying vision that focused on both educational reform and social change. Its goals were:

  1. To consider the role that teachers and children can play in helping to build a fairer, more inclusive society.

  2. To explore practical, hands-on group methods, that encourage children to:

    • Think for themselves

    • Develop a capacity for critical analysis

    • Make their own observations, reach their own conclusions, and take practical action for collectively improving their situation

    • Learn to cooperate more and compete less

    • Include and assist children who are disabled or marginalized

    • Resolve common problems in creative, innovative ways

    • Prepare for becoming “agents of change” in building a fairer, more inclusive society.

  3. To learn about the Child-to-Child methodology, and put into practice several key activities that would help the teachers to learn how to facilitate the activities with children, and the children to learn how to carry out the activities and teach other children to do the same.

  4. To help children learn in innovative “discovery-based” ways how to protect the health of their baby brothers and sisters, and of more vulnerable children in their community.

  5. To increase awareness of teachers and pupils of the importance and joy of including children with special needs, and of helping them to learn, play and participate with the rest as fully as possible.

  6. To evaluate the different activities explored during the workshop, and consider ways to introduce the new, more enabling and inclusive methodology into the school system on a trial basis—and then how to scale it up.