Community Newsletter | 23rd November, 2020
Alderney, Guernsey | November 2020
Dear Friends,
This week, I’ve been having fun with resilience! I know this sounds a bit weird, but I have made up a kind of dance. But when I say, ‘I made up’ – it has come from work I have done with children and in this case, with children described by some as ‘street children’ (although I never much liked that term). Children who have to live or work on the street are among the most resilient children you will ever have the pleasure of meeting. Some years ago, I did a piece of work to understand FROM THEM what the key words are that describe resilience – to get it into concrete terms. To cut a long story short it boils down to this:
“FALL OVER, GET UP, FEEL STRONG, MOVE FORWARD, MOVE BACK, FEEL BETTER!”
As some of the regulars have been reading – we are developing a programme with the blessing of allies in the USA, SuperBetter and I’m working with Kelvin in Zambia and his ‘team’ of children. Together, we have added a few tweaks to these phrases… which are now…
“FALL OVER, GET UP, FEEL STRONG, MOVE FORWARD 1, 2, 3, MOVE BACK 1, SUPER BETTER CHILDREN!”
As you can imagine – this is a kind of ‘dance’. Kelvin and his team are practicing this Resilience Dance and we hope to have a link to how this is all working out, plus images, in a newsletter very soon. Permissions from all the children are needed before we publish it!
So, stepping back from the technicalities of the dance… it is a rather amazing sequence and the children learn a lot in the discussions around WHY resilience involves all those ‘moves’. But it does, and a lot of us, in a lot of ways, are dancing this dance ALL THE TIME.
I hope that this week has been OK for you and included lots of moving forward and feeling strong. Thanks once again for the many encouraging messages from this great community which certainly helps ME to do that.
On the blog this week…
- In the light of what I’ve been talking about in the last two newsletters – it was a weird and amazing coincidence to find out that the LifeSkills post of this week is all about FEAR and Courage!
- 19th November was World Toilet Day and we re-shared our WASH messages (Water, Sanitation and Health).
- We absolutely LOVE Global Health Media. Take a look here at their new animated film, The Story of Coronavirus.
If you use an RSS feed reader, you might like to know that our RSS feed is now available! You’ll never miss another update.
Until next week – and have a great one…
Clare
P.S. I hope this photo of my dog, Lia enjoying the beach lifts your spirits!
