Hello Readers!

It’s Clare here! CEO and founder of Children for Health. I’m often sent The 100 Languages poem as my friends know that I like counting things and that I love the number 8 and the number 100.

I started Children for Health with a very simple vision: that every child in the world should have in their heads 100 messages that will help them on the path to well-being and happiness. Here is the front of our 100 Messages Poster, available from the website (the 100 health messages are printed on the back):

The 100 health messages are also in booklet form and it can be downloaded from our Free Resources area by clicking here.

We do lots of other things now but The 100 Messages are still very close to my heart, so here is The Hundred Languages poem that champions (like I hope we do) the creativity, individuality, and competence of even the very young child.

The Hundred Languages

By Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.

The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.

They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.

The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.