Category: News

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

The ICDP methodology “I am a Person too” is still going strong in El Salvador, thanks to the continuous support from UNICEF and the commitment from the Salvadoran Institute for the Integral Development of Childhood and Adolescence (ISNA). 

Marta Navarro, from UNICEF El Salvador sent ICDP a report in Spanish.

You can read it in English below:

METHODOLOGY ” I AM A PERSON TOO” OF ICDP IN EL SALVADOR
IMPLEMENTATION YEAR 2017

INTRODUCTON

El Salvador has made important advances in the institutional strengthening of the methodology “I am a person too”, which has allowed a greater expansion, guaranteeing awareness raising of more families in the country.
After the institutionalization of the methodology by the Salvadoran Institute for the Integral Development of Childhood and Adolescence (ISNA), “I am a person too” became consolidated as one of the methodologies that El Salvador is making available to strengthen the capacities of families and early childhood caregivers.

IMPLEMENTATION 2017

During 2017, the “Territorial Strategy for comprehensive early childhood care, with a focus on social inclusion” was consolidated in five municipalities in the country: Sonsonate, Santa Ana, Mejicanos, Ciudad Delgado and Soyapango. The strategy seeks to universalize training programs for families and caregivers of young girls and boys, through methodologies implemented by different government institutions. The ISNA joined this strategy and made the “I am a person too” program available to different agents at the local level who are working with families.

Within the framework of the Territorial Strategy, the ISNA managed to train 104 facilitators (85 women and 19 men) from government institutions (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, National Institute of Youth, National Council of Children and Adolescents, National Civil Police, Municipal Mayors, Rights Committees), NGOs and Foundations (International Plan, Salvador del Mundo Foundation-FUSALMO, Foundation for the Integral Development of the Family-FUNDIFAM, Asociación Nuevo Amanecer-ANADES and Asociación CINDE), University of El Salvador, Churches and community leaders. These trained facilitators used the program “I am a person too” in their work with families, and during 2017 managed to raise awareness of 253 families (233 women and 80 men participated), and 343 of their children (163 girls and 180).

In 2017, “I am a person too” was also included in the planning of a new project as a strategy for the prevention of violence against children, which aims to strengthen the work of the National Civil Police (PNC) . The plan is to build the capacity of the PNC personnel in ICDP, and include the program as one of the methodologies offered by this institution in relation to their work with families (both families of police officers and families of the communities they serve).

In addition to the above, ISNA has also implemented “I am a person too” in two of its institutional programs: 
1-. Strengthening of family relationships, where 1,889 families were sensitized (1,486 women and 403 men)
2-. Change Your Life Program, which sensitized 306 families (206 women and 100 men).                                   The total number of families reached: 2,195 families (1,692 women and 503 men) .

At the end of 2017, conversations began with Nicoletta Armstrong and with ISNA to adapt the methodology “I am a person too” for families with teenage children, as well as for adolescents (adolescent facilitators to deliver the program to other adolescents).

PROJECTIONS FOR 2018

The plan for 2018 is to implement the “Territorial Strategy” in six more municipalities, apart from the five in which it is already intervening, expanding coverage to more early childhood families and strengthening the development of more young girls and boys. The new municipalities are: La Unión, Conchagua, San Luis Talpa, San Miguel, San Pedro Masahuat and Santa Cruz Michapa. The aim is to form 240 new facilitators, and for them to raise awareness of 2,400 families.

Within the framework of the project to train the National Civil Police (PNC) in the methodology “I am a person too” as a strategy for the prevention of violence against children, the goal is to train 100 people (50 agents of the Prevention Division and 50 psychologists and social workers of the Police Welfare Division) who, in turn, will sensitize a total of 1000 families (both families of police officers as well as families from communities where these agents operate). The duration of the project is from December 2017 to July 2018 and, at the territorial level, it will focus on the 26 municipalities prioritized by the El Salvador Seguro National Plan. The objective of this effort is that the program “I am a person too” becomes institutionalized as a methodology of prevention of family violence and can be replicated by the trained agents with the families living in the territories they serve.

A new ICDP project has recently started in South Africa.

ICDP has signed an agreement for the development of an ICDP project in cooperation with the non-profit organization in Johannesburg, called Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (https://ububele.org/about-us/). The new project involves training of a group of professionals to become ICDP facilitators. ICDP trainer, Silje Bjørnstad Holter, is carrying out this work as a volunteer. She has already conducted the first workshop for Ububele staff and will be working in Johannesburg until May 2020. Silje is experienced in running caregiver groups and has written her thesis on ICDP, as well as a couple of evaluation and research reports.

The ICDP programme has been well received by the Ububele organization who now appear keen to integrate ICDP as one of their activities to strengthen child and family mental health in the township of Alexandra. On 22 of January 2020, Katharine Frost, the Director of the Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust wrote a letter to Nicoletta Armstrong, ICDP chair, in which she made the following statement:

“The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, provides therapeutic services to the community of Alexandra – a densely populated, impoverished community with a myriad of challenges. The addition of ICDP training, extends our offering so as to affect change and provide support for the families we serve. The ICDP appears to me to be a good fit with the principles and values of our organization. In particular, the emphasis on culture is resonant and appropriate. We are hoping that a total of 14 practitioners will be trained (a combination of psychologists and community counsellors) and we intend offering 7 self-training parenting groups within the coming months, so as to complete the training of our staff.”

ICDP training is going to be offered at a pedagogic university in Russia.

At the end of February 2018, Dr Oksana Isaeva, ICDP representative for Russia, had a meeting with the Chancellor of the Minin University (Pedagogic University) in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia.

It was an important meeting for ICDP and as a result it was agreed to start working on incorporating ICDP at the University. This would be achieved by offering ICDP training to professionals involved with the master programme – starting from next year. The long term plan is to form groups of ICDP facilitators at the university who would subsequently work with parents and specialists in pre-schools, schools and social centers.

There is also great interest in organizing international meetings (conference and education sessions) together with ICDP.

In addition, Oksana would like to invite academics worldwide who are working with the ICDP programme at different universities to link up with the Minin University. Her idea is to establish collaboration in order to explore some scientific questions relevant to the ICDP parenting programme.

Oksana M. Isaeva and Elena N. Volkova wrote a article on ICDP: “Early psycho-social intervention program WHO/ICDP as an effective optimization method for child-parental relationships”.  

In 2018, ICDP has become part of the “Programme of integration for refugees and migrants in Quito of the University of the Two Hemispheres”.

The programme seeks to promote learning of the Spanish language, lessons and practices of entrepreneurship applied to gastronomy, education of migratory law, learning of Ecuadorian culture and history and this year for the first time there is a psychosocial component represented by the ICDP Programme.

This is a complex project which is characterized by an intercultural approach. Students participate from different faculties that make up the University, such as political and legal sciences, pedagogy, business, gastronomy, communication, among others. Many of the beneficiaries of this project come from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as from other regions. The aim is to improve their quality of life within a framework of inter-cultural and social inclusion.

The ICDP programme will be implemented with caregivers, i.e. the ICDP workshops will be developed for refugee parents. Refugee children are often facing situations of discrimination because of their culture, especially in their schools, which poses a great challenge and requires cooperation with educational institutions. The promotion of inter-culturalism leads to respect and true integration, by recognizing differences and valuing them to generate a new learning space. ICDP will put a special emphasis on this and will be working in cooperation with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), NGO called “ RET” (Specialized in education issues), the Mennonite Church, The International Organization for Migration (IOM). The overall implementation of the different components of this programme of integration for refugees and migrants will be coordinated by the University of the Two Hemispheres.

A successful expansion of the ICDP programme was seen in the department of Boyacá, as an initiative of the local government.

The largest ICDP initiative in Colombia during 2017 was the project developed in the department of Boyacá. The initiative came from the local government who decided to implement ICDP as part of their broader efforts to combat violence and promote peace and good treatment in families and communities of the Boyacá department. This new strategy which in 2017 spread to many areas of the department is known as “Soy Como Tu” (I am as you are).

The ICDP intervention reached 37 municipalities and 160 facilitators were trained during the year. The implementation was coordinated by ICDP trainer Luis Fernando Lopez Cardozo, who works in the Boyacá government office. His 145 page long report (in Spanish), show that the results of this initiative look promising.

A group from Venezuela has asked for training in ICDP.

The very first steps for the introduction of ICDP in Caracas were made in the second half of 2017, when Trina Frometa, a Venezuelan living in USA, started to work with Nicoletta Armstrong. She then received training in the basics of ICDP to enable her to present the main ideas of the ICDP programme to other interested parties.

Trina is an award winning Venezuelan choreographer who has worldwide recognition through over 50 acclaimed international choreographic presentations. In 1995 she founded the Contemporary Dance Company “Proyecto Movimientos” and has been working as the artistic director ever since. In USA she has been using dance therapy in relation to Parkinson’s disease sufferers. For months now, Trina has been actively seeking and successfully obtaining support for families and children in Venezuela at a time of great need in that country, but more recently she has assumed the role of an ICDP ambassador – in the sense that she is trying to take the ICDP programme to her country.

Upon her temporary return to Caracas in April 2018, Trina will present the main content of the ICDP programme to a group of professionals who expressed interest to become ICDP trained. Afterwards, ICDP would organize a more systematic training processes for those who definitely commit to the entire ICDP training process.

A group of professionals from five different organizations embarked on their ICDP Facilitator level training in Dhaka, in January 2020.

Photo above was taken at the ICDP workshop: One trainee facilitator is doing an exercise whose aim is to show how an ICDP facilitator needs to communicate with a mother with a negative conception of her child; how to help that mother to see the situation from her daughte’rs perspective, and experience perhaps something new and positive about her child. 

The twenty one participants in process of becoming facilitators, are representatives from the Normisjon Bd, the Basha Enterprizes Ltd., the AG Mission, the Lamb project and the Salvation Army. The body in charge of organizing the ICDP workshops is Normisjon Bangladesh and the training is conducted by Gerd Eli Lindtjørn Haaland and three trainee trainers, Sajeda Aktar, Shahnaz Parveen and Edna Velasco. 

The first workshop was held in January and the second in February, allowing just enough time between the two workshops for participants to practice the eight ICDP guidelines for good interaction in relation to their own children.

“For me as an ICDP trainer, it was very inspiring to see how thoroughly the participants had done their self- assessments. Many had taken videos of their interactions with their children and had evaluated it according to the eight ICDP guidelines for good interaction, which they had learned at the first workshop. By doing such active self- reflection exercise they had initiated positive changes, and could already see the outcomes. By looking at the interaction videos they had made, we could point out what they did well and thereby give them more self-confidence as caregivers. One father shared his experience: 

– I never knew that I needed to have a shared focus with my two-year old. If he asked me something I hardly answered him. Now I know that I need to give my full attention and provide meaning to what he is interested in. Now I enjoy helping him to expand his ideas. When he askes me where this and that food comes from, I explain it to him and I always try to find photos or visit places so that he will understand even more. Now he askes even more questions, but it is all good. I enjoy to spend this time with him.

In the second workshop the participants learned how to convey the ICDP message to others. We discussed and role-played the seven ICDP principles of sensitisation. On the last day all the participants did mock session where they acted out as facilitators. 

For us who are giving the training, it has been a joy to see that the trainee facilitators are capable of bringing ICDP to their areas. They are now starting to conduct their first caregiver groups. They will work in pairs, and we will organize a follow up; there will also be a visit from an ICDP trainer. From May 31st to June 2nd 2020, we will all meet again for the third and final workshop. ” – Gerd Eli Lindtjørn Haaland.