Category: News

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.

At Fundaţia Umanitara Pacea (FUP) an ICDP workshop took place on the 18th and 19th of January 2018.

Fundaţia Umanitara Pacea (Humanitarian Foundation for Peace) is a non-political, nongovernmental organization founded in 2000 by the Franciscan order in Bacau, Romania,. It was set up in order to assist poor and marginalized people and focuses especially on providing education opportunities for children and young people. 

ICDP, FUP and the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) established cooperation in 2015, to bring the ICDP programme to FUP staff. NCA has been providing administrative and financial support to the ICDP training process at FUP.

After the workshop in January 2018, FUP has gained four new ICDP trainers: Cornelia Disca, Michaela Moraru, Dana Smerea and Lucian Mihai Bobarnac. “All their tasks and requirements for ICDP certification were carried out in a satisfactory way.  We had a small celebration with champagne, cakes and speeches. Silvia Breabin, ICDP trainer from Moldova was also present and she made a good and professional contribution to the group. There are six trainers now and they hope to organize a gathering of all the ICDP facilitators in Romania to a brush up on ICDP and hold an inspirational day. ” – says Elsa Dohlie, their ICDP trainer.

Silvia Breabin was trained several years ago in ICDP by Nicoletta Armstrong and has since then been training in Moldova as well Ukraine, but she is currently living in Romania.  She is now in contact with Nicoletta seeking support to establish together with the Romanian trainers an ICDP Romanian association, acting as a vehicle for spreading ICDP training more widely and systematically in Romania.

 A group of parents and caregivers have started to attend an ICDP course in Germany as planned.

On Saturday 13th of January 2018, an ICDP meeting for caregivers was held in the city of Hameln. Participants included two mothers and four professionals (three caregivers of special needs children and one childminder). It was the start of the first ICDP course to ever take place in Germany.

 “We had a wonderful meeting, in which we successfully engaged in building shared awareness, bonding and created the ground for sharing and future ICDP work together. I am very happy to finally get started with ICDP and this group! Some institutions, I got in contact with, are also interested in the ICDP programme and my plan is to offer ICDP training to different groups later on, i.e. parents of autistic children, education of childminders, and caretakers of older people.” – said Rita Crecelius (on photo above), the ICDP facilitator in charge of the course in Hameln.

An update by Nicoletta Armstrong

Ocotal
I started the ICDP training in Ocotal, Nicaragua in November 2016 and at that time I signed on behalf of ICDP an agreement for cooperation with the “Instituto De Promocion Humana” (INPRHU), a non-governmental agency working in the area of social development in Ocotal.

Since then, the work of ICDP has been steadily progressing at INPRHU. After my initial training visit, I have limited my involvement to just planning and supervising the ICDP training of the local team, which was taken over in 2017 by my Swedish colleague Monica Andersson (on photo above). She completed the training and there is currently a team of ICDP facilitators in Ocotal.

Monica has worked with the ICDP programme for a number of years in context of foster parenting in her native Sweden. In addition, Monica lived and worked in Nicaragua for several years during the 90-ies, coordinating a Swedish NGO focused on helping street working girls in vulnerable situations. Her organizational and field experiences from those years, as well as contacts have proven to be an excellent foundation for the development of ICDP in Nicaragua. 

Monica’s plans for 2018 include an ICDP visit to Ocotal in April, when she will be volunteering her work, although she managed to raise funds to cover expenses. The aim of the visit is to hold an ICDP workshop at INPRHU on the 12 and 13th of April, in order to consolidate the existing team of facilitators.

Managua
The ICDP foundation is in process of signing an agreement with a primary school in Managua (on photo below). Their school teachers have asked for ICDP training, in the hope of resolving some of the relational problems they are currently facing with the students. Monica will conduct the first ICDP workshop for the teachers on 7th and 8th of April and the second workshop will take place on 21st and 22nd of April 2018.

The Wawa Illari project started in 2017 and it is continuing…

The University Inca Garcilaso Vega (UIGV) in Lima is the ICDP partner on the ground, whereas Ana Sofia Mazzini, chair of ICDP Peru, is coordinating the implementation of all the components of this project – a demanding task as this is a complex multidisciplinary project, where in addition to ICDP there are three other components that are led by our colleagues from Canada: nutritional and health programmes, as well as teaching families to grow vegetables in community gardens and at home.

It is a research project with Canadian sponsorship. The overall aim is to improve the psychosocial, nutrition and health development of the children in Pachacamac. Pachacamac, is an area south of Lima (photo below), characterized by desert conditions whose population has a very low socio-economic status, with high incidents of malnourishment in children.

In 2017 a core group of medical professionals from the university UIGV was trained in ICDP. (Photo above was taken from one of the workshops.) In April 2018 they will start the ICDP training process of a team of nurses (the nurses are in their final year as students at UIGV) who will eventually become ICDP facilitators.
In the third phase one hundred families will attend the ICDP weekly sessions over a period of three months. The same families and children that receive ICDP will also be involved in the other components of this project and each component will be evaluated by comparing pre and post data.

The implementation of ICDP in China has been gathering momentum over the last twelve months. 

Fifteen ICDP certified trainers undertook the training of 124 new facilitators, 69 of these facilitators got their diplomas. The new facilitators gave training to 326 caregivers and as a result 2,078 children benefited from ICDP in China.   
 
A paper about the application of the 8 ICDP guidelines in a preschool was published in the China Early Child Education Magazine – it was written by a preschool teacher who is also a qualified ICDP facilitator. Another study about ICDP impact on minority population in Yunnan is currently being prepared by a qualified ICDP trainer.

A booklet for caregivers was prepared in Chinese and an ICDP cartoon was produced to accompany the booklet. In addition, three short films about ICDP application in different Chinese culture contexts were also made and these films were loaded on the official China video network.

ICDP China held its first annual conference in October 2017, which was attended by about 120 people, including facilitators, trainers, partner organizations and some of the caregivers. The theme of the conference was “Supporting each other”. The goal of the conference was to offer a platform for all those involved in ICDP in China to share their resources and establish a nationwide network.

The ICDP China webpage is almost ready for launching. It is prepared as a simple and user-friendly webpage that can function as a source of information to those who wish to learn more ICDP. The webpage is expected to be up and running sometime in February 2018. There will be an option for both English and Mandarin and the webpage will be divided into five sections:
• News and information about ICDP China – videos and photos
• List of verified facilitators/trainers
• Upcoming events – a calendar that shows planned activities and training schedules
• Information about ICDP international
• A research section where people can log in and post articles, share stories etc.
• Future plans for expansion, including a map of areas of the country where ICDP trainers and facilitators are already in operation

ACARI, a private development organization based in Petrolina, Pernambuco, Brazil has been working with the ICDP programme since 2010.

Currently ACARI is carrying out a project  in cooperation with KINDERNOTHILFE to combat domestic violence against children – this work will continue until 2021.

The objectives of the project include the elaboration of a self-protection methodology for children, family orientation work, network coordination and institutional strengthening.

As part of this project the ICDP trainers at ACARI formed 15 new ICDP facilitators. The ICDP booklet for caregivers was especially produced and published for use by the 70 families that have been attending ICDP sessions. Over the next three years the ICDP facilitators will be reaching out  and training new families in the community of Juazeiro.

In addition to this project, ACARI have prepared three new ICDP project applications, still in the pipeline:
1. An ICDP project  in partnership with the Petrolina Education Department, training teachers
2. ICDP as part of child protection initiatives of the Social Assistance Services
3. ICDP for families and children at risk, in partnership with the NGO in Fortaleza, called IFAN

ACARI website: www.acariong.wixsite.com/acari