Category: News

Several ICDP workshops for new facilitators took place in Hawassa, Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, in February and March 2020.

 Hawassa and Addis Ababa: A group of 16 social workers from the Women and Children Affairs organization completed their ICDP facilitator level training and received their certificate on 7th of March 2020. Together they trained 80 caregivers and parents, while each caregiver was responsible for 10 to 20 children. Most of the trained caregivers work with disadvantage children in need of special care and protection.

The feedback from caregivers was positive according to Atnaf Berhanu, ICDP trainer: “The eight guidelines for good interaction gave caregivers a good orientation and as a result they started to practice new ways of interacting with the children in their care. The topic of how to follow the child’s initiative was found to be particularly important. One mother said that her daughter wanted to be a pilot, but she wanted her to be a medical doctor. After attending the ICDP sensitization meetings the mother said that she started to see the importance of following her daughter’s lead. 

I also held the second part of the ICDP training, both in Hawassa and in Addis Ababa. After the first training all participants made a short film of their own interaction with their children and/or with children of relatives. When we met, we watched the films together and we shared opinions through discussions about what we observed – and this helped most participants to understood the guidelines better. Most of the participants reported that the first ICDP training cycle had helped them to change their attitude towards children. One participant of ICDP training said:“This training is not only helping us to have a good interaction with our children, it is also helping us to consolidate a good interaction with our partners and colleagues at workplace.”

The two groups of facilitators, in Hawassa and in Addis Ababa, were motivated to continue with ICDP training and they will be recruiting 160 new parents and caregivers for training in the ICDP programme.

Bahir Dar: ICDP training has also started in Bahir Dar. The participants came from different parts of the region. Many came from far away, up to 6 hours’ drive by public transport. At the workshop all participants shared stories linked to their childhood experiences. They said that the ICDP training was very relevant for their communities and could help them to raise their children with love and understanding. They emphasized the importance of helping parents to see their children as persons and to guide them so that they can develop well. Many participants said they were determined to apply ICDP when they return home. 

ICDP trainer Sergey Krasin informs:

On 12-13^th  of February 2020, Anna Trukhan, ICDP Ukraine chair, conducted the workshop “Effective ways to support parents of pupils” at the Kharkov Humanitarian Pedagogical Academy.  The workshop was for senior methodologists from different kindergartens in Kharkov. The participants became acquainted with the history of ICDP, its basic principles, criteria and main features.

Apart from this, in the period up to March 2020, there were a lot of facilitators who continued to work in different organizations in Kharkov. They are conducting the ICDP trainings for parents and Anna and I provide supervisory assistance to them.

ICDP training was rolled out to parents through cooperation with the NGO “You Too”; facilitators Victoria Lepyokha, Elena Bondar and Elena Martynyuk conducted ICDP courses for 4 parent groups. The participants of these groups were parents who are faced with difficult life circumstances (such as having seriously ill relatives, or suffering due to death of a close relative, or struggling to cope being single mothers, or grandmothers who took grandchildren under their guardianship) as well as families who want to improve relationships with their children.

“We have three couples in one of these groups, which is very pleasing, as it is very good when both parents are interested in developing a good relationship with their child and are willing to take responsibility for it” – says facilitator Victoria Lepeha.

A very interesting team of facilitators works in the Kidsdream Private Kindergarten. The team consists of a mother and her son: Natalia Novachenko and Evgeny Fedak. They conduct ICDP trainings for parents of children with disabilities.

Anna and I plan to start training new groups of facilitators in Kharkiv and Odesa, as soon as the corona virus situation abates.  In that training we will apply our new programme including the PSEA training. So, in our organization, we are already preparing to implement the ICDP Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) policies and we will apply it to all our partners. We will also organize the same training for all facilitators, including those who have already been trained in the past. In the future, PSEA training will be integrated in the general ICDP training courses as mandatory. We are currently designing a new training programme at three levels:

1st level – Basic training in the eight ICDP guidelines.; 2nd level – ICDP Facilitator level; 3rd level – Regional trainer for regional work. This level will for very experienced facilitators. In this programme we plan to conduct PSEA training after the first level.

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE IN UKRAINE

ICDP trainer, Maria Gorskova was the key organiser of a conference for ICDP facilitators, which was conducted on Zoom, on the 17^th of October 2020.

The aim of the conference was to share and motivate the ICDP facilitators at this time, when due to Covid-19 there are many difficulties and obstacles in their work. The conference proved to be a success, although the participation was smaller than planned.

The ICDP team of trainers, led by Zenona Gread, made good progress throughout 2020. 

The ICDP programme is being rolled out by Save the Children as part of their parenting package, which combines ICDP with cash transfer and budgeting schemes. This is facilitated through positive cooperation with the government. Seventy new facilitators and over 1500 families received ICDP training.

At a recent network meeting, parents talked about the positive changes in their lives as a result of their participation in the parenting programme, emphasizing better and warmer interactions with their children. The event was filmed and the footage included a song celebrating symbolically the importance of the ICDP interactive topics.

Read a short report from the ICDP trainers

The new research article about the Wawa Illari project in Peru is now freely available online.

It was published by Frontiers in Public Health, a multidisciplinary open-access journal which publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research and is at the forefront of disseminating scientific knowledge to researchers, academics, clinicians, policy makers and the public worldwide.

Follow the link below to find the published article: 

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.567900

The local team continued to train in the ICDP programme throughout 2020.

In the Nizhny Novgorod City and the Nizhny Novgorod region, the ICDP programme was introduced in schools and preschools, as well as to university students. 

ICDP training was given to ten groups, which included psychologists, teachers and specialists of non-profit organizations. In total 128 participants attended the workshops.

Read a short report from Oksana Isaeva.

On photo above: the 14 newly certified ICDP facilitators after receiving their certificates. 

Fourteen ICDP facilitators from Manyara region completed ICDP training in the autumn of 2020 by attending the final training from 17th to 19th of September. Their trainers were Verynice Frederick and Egla Matechi.

All fourteen facilitators held eight ICDP meetings with their respective groups of parents/caregivers and they all attended the final training workshop. At the workshop, they shared about their different experiences of working with parents, including any encountered difficulties. Some common challenges were identified, such as low participation of men and the participant parents’ difficulties in reaching the place of the meetings due to long distances.

Among other activities at the workshop, the sensitization principles were revised through role play. Some facilitators acted in role plays as parents and others as facilitators; it was an effective way of reviewing facilitators’ practical work.

The facilitators reported that they had observed positive changes in the parents’ relationship with their children and they showed a lot of interest and commitment to take ICDP to more parents/caregivers in their respective communities and at their working place. 

Two new parent groups have already started to receive ICDP.

There have been some important developments by ICDP in Bangladesh.

The year 2020 was a challenging year for ICDP in Bangladesh, as it was in many countries all over the world.

Read more in their report.

Two facilitators are now starting to implement the ICDP programme for the first time in Uzbekistan.

ICDP has established an agreement for training and cooperation with the Happy Start preschool in Tashkent. 

Happy Start is a learning centre for 2 to10 years old children and they offer pre-school education and after school activities. This is the link to their website: https://happystart.uz/. 

Since the summer of 2020, as part of the new developments at Happy Start, Shincon Uzbekistan is funding the introduction and implementation of the ICDP programme.

Magdalena Brännström and Valentina Ten have been receiving training online, through webinars with Nicoletta Armstrong and on the 14th of October 2020, they have started their ICDP practical task. The task consists of implementing the ICDP programme with the caregivers that are working at Happy Start. They will be holding weekly meetings together over several months in order to complete the full ICDP programme.

We wish you all the success!

The chair of the ICDP Finland Association describes the recent meeting.

“Our association hosted a zoom event for ICDP facilitators in Finland, on Tuesday, the 24^th of November. There are one hundred and forty-four facilitators in Finland, and twenty-nine facilitators from many corners of the country participated eagerly (plus a few cats and a dog) at the zoom event, sharing their ICDP experiences and inspiring each other.

We spoke of ways to practice sensitivity, playfulness and empathy with children, caregivers, differently abled people, colleagues and others, both when physically present and in remote setting.

Even though we would rather have met each other in real life, the ICDP magic was still tangible in this virtual meeting space”. – Pamela Antila.

Ten professionals are ready to receive their ICDP certificates having completed training at facilitator level.

Their training was carried out in the frame of an ongoing cooperation between the municipalities in Tapa and the Estonian Association of Central Norway. Six Estonians, two Russians and two Norwegians were trained by Grete Hyldmo and Hege Beate Sivertsen, two ICDP trainers from Trondheim, Norway. Grete Hyldmo explains: 

“I am very proud and happy to inform that the six professionals working in the schools in Tapa, Estonia have qualified for certification as ICDP facilitators. They participated actively in two training workshops held in Norway, in October 2019 and in January 2020. After the workshops they carried out their practical tasks conscientiously. They attended six full days of training and spent one day visiting two kindergartens and a primary school. They also had three days off for sightseeing Trondheim and its surroundings.

In January one of the themes was about cultural sensitization, violence and sexual abuse with a focus on the difficulties in their own society. According to ICDP obligations to the UN politics on the matters of sexual abuse and violence, they will arrange a day about these topics in Tapa, by a well-qualified, Estonian lecturer who knows the national legislations on these matters.

At the January workshop each participant presented a video of their own practice with children and analyzed it using the 8 guidelines of the ICDP programme. This was followed by their practical work in rolling out the programme to parent groups, which was successfully completed just before lock down in March. We visited them while they were still applying ICDP with groups of parents; we gathered the whole group in Tapa, for a day of support and reflections in the middle of February. In March, because of the corona virus pandemic, the second support session was held digitally and it was done together with our interpreter by talking to each person individually. To complete their training all participants wrote solid reports that contained reflections on their own practical work with parents, including descriptions of the use of exercises and their own application of the 7 principles of sensitization.

During the last week of August 2020, Tapa municipalities arranged an ICDP day for all the teachers. Many of the teachers had earlier participated as parents themselves in the ICDP parent groups that were conducted by trainee facilitators during the winter months and had thus been introduced to the ICDP programme. As a result of this good strategy quite a few teachers from different schools in Tapa now understand the ICDP programme from personal experience of attending parent groups. 

The ICDP facilitators look forward to receiving their certification at a graduation ceremony in Tapa. The director of Education in Tapa, Anne Roos, participated in the training and will also become an ICDP certified facilitator.  

The Tapa city council adopted the project and was kept informed all the way. The interpreter, Piret Purdelo Tomingas has not only helped with translations but has also had a central role in the project preparations and execution and the whole team has already started working on a new application for another training programme. I think they really have a unique possibility to make a difference in Tapa.”