By Dalia Jawhary
Through SPNL’s current approach towards involving multi-stakeholders in the management and planning of Hima site, and as a part of the School with No Walls program, SPNL adopted the Design for Change approach (DFC) for involving kids and youth in the management of their village and its natural resources. The Design For Change (DFC) is among largest global movement that gives children the opportunity to express their own ideas for a better world and put them into action, where it has been adopted in 30 countries around the world. It can be implemented within a school or with any group of children aged between 8 and 18 years old. DFC empowers children by giving them the tool to say I CAN, which are the two most powerful words a person can believe. Children who have discovered this are changing their world.
The main four steps of the process are:
- FEEL the environment, map it, identify problems and vote for the one hot spot to work on
- IMAGINE the best solution
- DO create a plan and implement it
- SHARE the story with the community, local newspaper … and the world!
The teachers guide the school students in the process so that the youngsters get to understand the issue in-depth, but have no influence on decision-making. The whole approach relies on the faith in children’s creativity, curiosity and natural willingness to act upon the problems that affect them.
Accordingly, SPNL organized a training session on DFC in Hima Anjar on 24 February 2015. The training was given by the DFC expert Mrs. Nada Beainy, where around 15 teachers from the Armenian Evangelical School attended it. Based on the training session, the DFC approach was adopted in Hima Anjar in order to be applied on local schools and for coming up with innovative ideas to conserve natural resources as a part of the environmental club activities which was established in the Evangelical School.
