Author: Visma Digital Commerce

Here are some impressions from an ICDP event in 2018.

ICDP trainer, Hitoshi Maeshima explains:

In October, we held a seminar on the ICDP programme. Unfortunately, a typhoon was approaching Japan just at that time, which meant that several people who had planned to attend were unable to come because of strong winds and intense rain. The attendees included seven women and one man; the age group ranged from 23 to 85 years old; there were caregivers of older people, children’s caregivers and a retired kindergarten director.

At the seminar we showed the Unicef promotional video from Colombia (which is on the ICDP webpage:  http://www.icdp.info/var/uploaded/2013/04/2013-04-15_06-57-07_unicef_promotional_video_x264.mp4 ). We have translated the English subtitles that appear on that video and in addition most of the English narrations were also translated into Japanese. We felt that this video transmits in a very compact way all the important aspects and the essence of ICDP .

We are planning to have another meeting for facilitators in January. Here are some comments from the seminar:

I had attended ICDP before so this was not my first experience. However it was very refreshing for me and I received positive inner stimulation.
I felt this time more clearly how important our heart is, rather than our mind or brain, when we are dealing with human relationships.
I had a dilemma, as I felt that my behaviour did not reflect what I knew theoretically about building better human relations with children and others, and in that context ICDP felt like an opportunity to change and as a result I felt I had improved.

Until now, I have been trying to find the answer to child care outside myself, but on the ICDP day, I found that the answer might be inside myself – and this I noticed for the first time in my life.
Also, I had been feeling within myself an invisible obstruction preventing me to extend my thinking, but that day, while we were expressing and hearing each other’s experiences from early years to adult life, I noticed that this obstruction comes unconsciously from the frame of a habit of my heart and a particular way of my own thinking. In the workshop, I felt that I had been freed from the weir of my own thought, and to my surprise there were many unexpected observations and learnings, it was really wonderful time to me.
It was my first participation to ICDP meeting. The day was very significant to me. Thank you.

The ICDP project in Envigado has almost been completed.

During the second half of 2017, an ICDP project took place in the town of Envigado, in the department of Antioquia, Colombia. The support for this ICDP initiative came from the participative funding by the Municipal administration, operated by COMFENALCO. The ICDP Medellin team of facilitators carried out the training, led by trainer Carolina Montoya.  

The training in the ICDP programme was given to forty six people, who were divided in five groups attending separate courses. The principles of the ICDP programme were delivered through a ludic-artistic methodological strategy.

On the 16th, 18th and 19th of November 2017, the ICDP facilitators will be involved in finalizing the ICDP training process in Zone 2 and Zone 10 in Envigado.

Participants were comprised of grandmothers, mothers and their children and also teachers from the urban and rural areas. ICDP was successfully presented for the first time to children and this was done in a playful way through games and narratives – all children participated in a joyful way showing interest in all ICDP topics.

In India, a group of Save the Children staff completed their training to become ICDP facilitators.

Save the Children has been developing projects referred to as Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) in a number of countries. CSSP encompasses child-focused or family-based social programmes that directly or indirectly address children’s needs and rights through a combination of economic support but also complementary interventions with the aim of improving child development and ensuring that social protection is child-sensitive.

In the Dungarpur district, India, an CSSP project has been developing since 2011 and this year ICDP was added to it. One of the key interventions of the project is based around developing improved caregiving skills with families that receive cash support from the government for taking care of orphaned children and ICDP is now being used in this context.

The ICDP training has been ongoing since the beginning of 2017 and on the 26th of October 2017 the first group of twelve facilitators received their ICDP diplomas from Nicoletta Armstrong, their trainer (see photo above).

Most of the facilitators are working with groups of parents in poor villages around Dungarpur (see photo below), and two facilitators have implemented ICDP with their colleagues in the Save the Children office in Delhi. The ICDP work has been showing promising results. Some of the facilitators will continue the ICDP process to reach the ICDP trainer level.

ICDP training for Save the Children staff in Ormoc, Philippines.

Click here to see a photo report.

An ICDP certification workshop and ceremony was held in Panama city.

The event took place at the premises of the NGO “Movimiento Nueva Generacion” in Barraza, Panama city, Panama. For information about Movimiento Nueva Generacion see:  http://www.icdp.info/panama

On the last day, on 24th of November 2017 the first group of eight people (on photo above) received their ICDP diplomas as facilitators. A second group is still engaged in the process of doing their ‘self-training’ projects, to be completed in 2018.

The certification ceremony was attended by Nicoletta Armstrong, who led the training, as well as the NGO director and a representative from UNICEF Panama. It was agreed to expand the work with the ICDP programme by training parents from the neighbouring school and health centre. The ICDP team of facilitators will be coordinated by Antonio Mendoza. Another positive outcome was the commitment to fund the trip of two facilitators from Panama to attend the ICDP Latin America Gathering planned to take place in San Salvador, in October 2018.

Field visit: “I attended an ICDP meeting with parents at one of the centres that belong to the NGO Movimiento Nueva Generacion – the Santa Ana centre. It was parents’ eighth meeting at the end of which they received ICDP certificates of attendance. It was a pleasant event marked by a small ceremony with food and refreshments. Parents were happy to talk about their experiences and were pleased to receive a paper as a reward for their participation in the ICDP course. It was moving to hear one father (sitting on far left on photo below) share about his experience of change. He had been a strict father and used corporal punishment; he seldom talked to his two girls before ICDP, but after participating in the course he found himself talking and even praising his children – and gradually he stopped using corporal punishment. Other participants talked about a misconception, common in their community, concerning the effects of empathy. They explained that it was commonly held that children need strict upbringing in order to cope with the harsh realities of life in these marginalized communities, plagued by crime, drugs and violence. However, they said they realized during the ICDP course that empathy was a better way of building strength and resilience in their children.” – Nicoletta Armstrong.

The big news is the translation of Hundeide’s book into Finnish.

ICDP Finland is happy to announce that after years of struggling with an unfinished manuscript which served as a course book, they have managed to complete the translation into Finnish and have published Karsten Hundeide’s book “The essence of human care: an introduction to the ICDP programme”. All ICDP terms and concepts have  finally been translated and this makes both the understanding and the spreading of the ICDP programme a great deal easier, said the Finnish ICDP trainers.

ICDP Finland also informs that its trainers held training courses in different parts of the country and as a result there are now 22 new facilitators who are working with different groups of caregivers. The facilitators came together to exchange experiences and inspire each other at a meeting in Kotka, held in September 2017.

Through collaboration with different NGOs, ICDP Finland continues to focus on raising public awareness about the ICDP programe and its potential of supporting parents and families.

On photo below: A new group of day care professionals, who have just gone through the ICDP basic training at the family center in Pargas, Southwestern Finland, in October and November. “We had great discussions and many of the participants found that sharing their short videos from work was especially helpful in focusing their attention to all the wonderful details of togetherness and strengthening their professionalism as caregivers.” -Petra Zilliacus, ICDP trainer.

In the search to improve the quality of relationship between adolescents and their families, INPRHU has taken the initiative to institutionalize the ICDP programme.

The Institute for Human Promotion (INPRHU) in Ocotal, Nicaragua, has been developing the ICDP methodology with all the different target groups with which they work, by articulating their efforts with other Institutions such as, the Ministry of Education and the Public Ministry, as well as  withother organizaitons that work with families, children and adolescents.

In 2019, INPRHU leadership made the decision to strengthen the skills of  all its staff through training in the ICDP programme. 

” ICDP emphasises good interactions based on empathy and thorugh ICDP we want to promote comprehensive and loving relationships between adults in the care of adolescents, that would in turn contribute to the process of humanization of our society. 

We provide individualized psychological attention to women, girls and adolescents who have experienced situations of violence. The ICDP principles are being put into practice as a tool that directs this work towards personal empowerment. ICDP helps us to reconstruct their self-esteem and to strengthen their awareness of being people with rights and not objects.

The programme is particularly important for our community work with families in situations of violence –  we conducted sessions based on the content of ICDP, which was a very interesting experience, because it changed the way families perceive their children; it helped them to really see their girls and boys,  to recognize their children’s capacities and their ability to make decisions as persons. 

The ICDP prinicples have also been used as a tool and content of the Inprhu radio programme called Our Voices for Change, a programme that is reaching the entire department of Nueva Segovia. The radio is especially popular and listened to by families living in rural areas – with the ICDP content we feel that we are contributing towards the improvement of relations between adults, mothers, fathers, guardians and their boys and girls.

One of the important exerices that we apply, is the ICDP exercise that asks participants to observe photos of children with different expressions of feelings, such as Sadness, Happiness, Joy, Annoyance, Loneliness – and in this connection many participants remembered and shared  their experiences from when they were children, for example, when they were scolded or hit. They recognized in the photos their own felt sadness. The exercise also helped release feelings of empathy towards the suffering of their own children.” 

– explains director, Aura Estela. 

Mariana Jalba, a child neurologist has been using ICDP with children and parents since 2012.

Mariana and the team of ICDP trainers at the Voinicel Early Intervention Institute in Kishinev put a great deal of effort on promoting ICDP in Moldova throughout 2017. 

“We shared our knowledge with as many people as possible. That’s why we created an informational spot in two languages: Romanian and Russian.

We use it at different events such as conferences and workshops.

 It is available on our Facebook page and web: https://www.facebook.com/pg/centrulvoinicel/videos/?ref=page_internal.

Another way of sharing information about the ICDP programme was by including it in the curricula for specialists in Early Intervention.”

Paul Mmanjamwada, the representative for ICDP in Malawi sent us an update.

The Norwegian Church Aid in Malawi has recently provided funds to the Evangelical Association of Malawi to implement ICDP in the Karonga district, one of the boarder districts close to Tanzania.

The organization has already trained an initial group of 30 caregivers from different community based child care centres on the basic concepts and principles of the ICDP programme. We intend to select from this group a core team of 10 caregivers whom we intend to train as ICDP facilitators. It is also interesting to see how disability has been well integrated within the project.

ICDP network meeting
We are also planning for an ICDP network meeting that will mobilize all ICDP players in the country. It will take place in December 2017.

Translation of the ICDP facilitators’ manual
We have now finalized the translation of the ICDP training manual into the vernacular Chichewa and this will ease the process of ICDP training in future.

ICDP is still present in Bolivia.

In Bolivia, the ICDP programme is still being rolled out with the support from the Lutheran Church. The ICDP team counts on three trainers and twenty facilitators.

However, there were some significant changes in the local team as Gunn Strømme, who was instrumental in bringing ICDP to Bolivia, had to return to Norway. She was replaced by Anne Dagsland, a teacher, with broad experience of working on projects involving relationships in families and among young people.

In October 2017 a new ICDP project was started and for this purpose the ICDP booklet for caregivers was printed.