Arigatou International

Believing that every child is a precious treasure of humanity, Arigatou International draws on universal principles of common good to fulfill its “All for Children” mission. At the heart of our work is creating inclusive spaces for shared action to promote children’s rights and well-being. We encourage individuals and organizations to take action to ensure that all girls and boys grow up safe and sound, develop to their full potential, and are inspired and empowered to work with others to make a difference in their communities. 

Arigatou International develops and sustains multi-stakeholder initiatives designed to ensure that all children are treated with dignity and that all of their rights are respected and protected. Engaging diverse collaborators, we employ interfaith and intercultural approaches to bring about positive change for children at all levels—from the grassroots to the global.

At Arigatou International, we value children for who they are and fully involve them in our work, always safeguarding their well-being, providing for their full participation, and affirming their human dignity. For Arigatou, children are deeply respected, fully recognized participants in shaping the world.

Arigatou International works together with diverse religious leaders and faith communities, international agencies, civil society organizations, governments, children and young people in more than 80 countries around the world, and its efforts continue to grow in reach, diversity and impact.

Across our four global initiatives—the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC), Ethics Education for Children, Prayer and Action for Children, and End Child Poverty—we are guided by the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and committed to contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially the targets related to children.

Arigatou International is an international NGO in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and in consultative status with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Arigatou International was founded in 1990 by the Japanese Buddhist organization Myochikai, whose members continue to support its work today with donations. 

Arigatou International has its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, and offices in Geneva, New York, and Nairobi which support its global initiatives.

Arigatou International office in Geneva is responsible for the Ethics Education initiative. Ethics Education for Children promotes values-based education for children, supporting the child’s right to education, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and contributing to children’s holistic development, including their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  It utilizes a transformative approach to interfaith and intercultural learning, placing children at the heart of all of its work. Ethics Education for Children is committed to safeguarding the dignity of all children, ensuring their meaningful participation, and empowering them to become agents of positive change and drivers of collective actions who can help build just, peaceful societies. 

 
Ethics Education supports intercultural and interfaith learning and dialogue, using transformative pedagogy to place children at the center of learning and utilizing collaborative and dialogical methodologies.

As Head of Programs, Francisco leads the diverse portfolio of programs of Arigatou International – Geneva, supervising the programmatic areas and providing strategic support to the overall operations of the office.  

With a rich background in Conflict Transformation from the University of Maryland, USA, expertise in the Social Doctrine of the Church from the Pontifical University of Mexico, and an academic background in Law from the Catholic University of Argentina, Francisco brings a unique blend of skills to his role.   

We estimate that your Team Lead and organization’s senior-level staff commit 3-4 hours of work per week on a research-intensive project over the course of the 12-week LEAP Project sprint. You may find it helpful to return to this question once you have completed the rest of the application. 

As Head of Programs, Francisco is well-positioned to liaise and coordinate the efforts of other senior team members in supporting the LEAP project. As an organization, we have prioritized this project to conduct comprehensive research on the impact and contribution of our Learning to Live Together program (ages 6-11) and produce a robust and coherent report to show the evidence of our program 

Learning to Live Together: 
An Intercultural and Interfaith Program for Ethics Education for Children to address racial and ethnic bullying and discrimination in schools 

In an increasingly globalized world where indicators on inter-groups tensions are worsening, there is a strong resurgence of racism, xenophobia and discrimination in many community settings. In schools, we are witnessing an increase in bullying motivated by prejudice against someone’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, culture, citizenship status or religion. This type of bullying is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes including poor mental health, lower academic engagement, and an increased risk of involvement in delinquent behaviors, especially among older learners. 

Violence against children is a major obstacle to learning. It has devastating effects on brain development and health outcomes.  School violence is associated with lower educational achievement and reduced adult income- therefore having a detrimental effect on children’s potential. 

Evidence shows that 1 out of every 5 children is bullied due to their physical appearance, ethnicity, nationality and skin color, hindering their well-being and academic success. This bullying can range from casual but hurtful remarks, to deliberate physical and verbal attacks. It can include religious abuse and vilification.  More than 30% of the world’s students have been victims of bullying are nearly three times more likely to feel like an outsider at school and more than twice as likely to miss school. When frequently bullied they are also more likely to expect to leave formal education after finishing secondary school compared with children who are not frequently bullied. 

Bullying also negatively affects children’s mental health and quality of life. Children who are bullied are around twice as likely to feel lonely, to be unable to sleep at night and to have contemplated suicide as those who are not bullied. They are more likely to smoke, consume alcohol or use cannabis, and have earlier sexual experiences than those who have not been bullied. Their self-reported quality of health and life satisfaction is much lower than that of children not involved in bullying. 

Despite research on anti-bullying interventions and the increase in prevalence of racial bullying (some studying highlight it concerns half of the school students), there is no systemic approach or resources for teachers to address ethnic and race-related bullying in schools, due to lack of competencies and confidence from teachers to address issues related to religious and ethnic identities, biases against certain groups of the population, and normalization of peer violence in schools.    

Our solution is a contribution to decrease violence among peers, particularly looking at racial and ethnic bullying. It aims to equip educators in formal and non-formal educational settings to identify and address bullying based on ethnicity, religion or race in their classrooms contributing to the overall decrease of violence and the specific decrease of bullying victimization among racial, ethnic and/or religious minority learners, through the use of an ethics education transformative pedagogical approach that promotes intercultural and interfaith learning.  This approach fosters the creation of safe, inclusive, equitable, and gender-transformative learning environments for all children, ultimately contributing to improve learning outcomes and strengthen the resilience of children to address violence in the community, empowering them to speak up and develop collective actions to address issues that affect them. 

Our solution is focused on four main aspects: 1. Training of educators to equip them with knowledge, attitudes, skills and tools to foster intercultural and interfaith learning through an ethics education transformative pedagogy; 2. Classroom program design and curriculum integration to develop safe learning environments, promote inclusive and equitable relationships, and transformative learning experiences; and 3. Support to collective child-led actions that reach the whole school and involve the community around, including parents, religious leaders and others, thereby enhancing children’s agency and empowerment as a critical mechanism to end violence in schools; and 4. Whole-school approach to ensure that policies, training, awareness and mechanisms are in place.   

Our solution will utilize will utilise the Learning to Live Together, a resource for educators in formal and non-formal settings designed to address prejudices, discrimination and violence among peers, and is centered around the need to foster solidarity, empathy and respect for others in the school context, using transformative and participatory approaches, adapted to the learning needs and capacities of young students. A similar program for children 12 to 18, has proven effective to address racism and bullying based on racial, ethnic and/or religious affiliations.  We want to develop evidence on the effectiveness of the work with younger children.  

Learning to Live Together addresses the need to provide children earlier in life with opportunities to strengthen their sense of self and purpose, to learn to empathize with and respect people from diverse cultures, religions, spiritual traditions and beliefs, and to develop 21st century skills that empower them to learn to reconcile their differences with others, and transform their communities together. It aims to encourage bystanders to take action, and reduce stigma and stereotypes. 

Findings from pilot workshops have shown that participating children reflect upon situations of conflict around them, and document how their behaviors and attitudes change, particularly as they begin to privilege dialogue over violence. Teachers noted the development of new friendships and relationships across diverse ethnic, religious, gender and socio-economic lines.  

The pilots have also shown to encourage the transformation of educators themselves, as they move from top-down approaches of teaching to horizontal methods that enable children to feel more engaged, included, and valued, resulting in better participation and dialogue. 

To develop the Learning to Live Together – An Intercultural and Interfaith Program for Ethics Education for Children 6 to 11 Years Old we conducted a mix of qualitative research and literature review, a series of pilot testing workshops as well as user interviews and reports. 

First from 2018 to 2021, Arigatou International convened a group of experts that reviewed methodological approaches, political and environmental issues, as well as the health and education crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in 2020. The experts explored the multiple opportunities that education systems, educators, families, and communities have to empower children to develop positively in a pluralistic world—in particular, by fostering their social, emotional and spiritual well-being and empowering them to contribute to their communities.

Secondly, Arigatou International built on the effectiveness of the first ethics education program for children 12 to 18 years old which was launched in 2008 and has been implemented in more than 50 countries. The recommendations contained in the monitoring and evaluation report of the Learning to Live Together 12 to 185, as well as key informant interviews with implementing organizations and case studies, have all contributed evidence on the effectiveness of the program and all this learning has been taken into account when adapting the program to younger ages. 

Seven pilot workshops were held, in Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Kenya, Portugal, Romania and Tanzania, involving 239 children from 6 to 11 years old from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain and Muslim communities or with no religious affiliation, and from other ethnic and spiritual communities, such as the Maasai, Roma and locally indigenous communities. Six of the seven pilot workshops were preceded by stakeholders’ meetings, which brought together a total of 175 participants from 45 different institutions. These included religious leaders, educators, child protection experts, and staff from UNESCO and UNICEF. 

In all locations, the selection of participants ensured age and gender balance, as well as religious diversity representing the local reality. Except for Ecuador and Romania, where children came from middle-class backgrounds, children in other locations came from vulnerable contexts affected by several forms of social challenges, including poverty, violence in the home, street and gang violence, bullying, or alcohol and drug consumption. 

In 2021, another two pilot workshops were held online, with participants from Bhutan and Indonesia, bringing together a total of 60 children, and two separate stakeholders’ meetings were held with experts from the Middle East and the United States of America, with a total of 60 people participating. 

The content piloted during the workshops was based on the Draft Module 0 developed as a result of the first meeting of the Expert Group, that contained the recommended content to be tested with the children aged 6 to 11.

The data collected during the implementation of the Learning to Live Together Program with children 12 to 18 years old over the last 18 years was detailed and analyzed using monitoring and evaluation processes as well as information gathered from implementing partners. Findings from Greece, India, Kenya, El Salvador and Romania suggested that education programs based on Learning to Live Together contributed to reduced prejudice among children against people who are different from them, their culture, or beliefs. However, the implementation also revealed that a different approach is needed to work with younger children. The development of the child in the ages 6 to 11 differs signigicantly from the adolescence. Through our on-the-ground implementation we understood that we needed to integrate insights from the literature on child development in our work moving forward with younger children. 

Furthermore, the pilot workshops provided the opportunity to test the proposed content and pedagogical approaches with children of these ages while ensuring a physically and emotionally safe educational environment, promoting cultural and religious sensitivity, listening to their voices, learning about their needs, challenges, dreams, and ideas, and identifying together with them best ways to respond to those. The workshops also provided opportunities to reflect upon how the program can best be implemented in contexts of violence, displacement, conflict or poverty. 

Both the pilot workshops, the literature review, the technical support of the experts and the dialogues with diverse stakeholders generated important recommendations for the development process and allowed for reflection on various contextual issues that affect children and their views. A very important aspect of the pilot workshops was that children’s reflections and experiences directly contributed to the design and development of the manual and offered significant contributions to the adaptation process. 

From the information and experiences collected through the seven pilot-workshops emerged the need to have different approaches in the work with children aged six to eight, and nine to eleven. The first group has a shorter attention span, needs more individual attention and the use of a simpler language. As they are entering formal education, the activities that involve writing take more time, often generate frustration due to the time it takes and anxiety in making “mistakes”. Drawing and painting to express their ideas seem to work better at these ages.  

Emotions appear to be particularly important in contexts affected by violence where children struggle daily with difficult emotions, but also during a period of life when they develop their self-esteem and self-concept.  

Facilitators’ attitude, readiness to work with these ages and creativity is extremely important to influence children’s attention, openness and interest during the sessions. Facilitators’ experience and knowledge on child-development was identified as critical when customising the implementation to this age group, ensuring context-sensitivity, the development of safe and empowering learning environments, the proper adaptation of the activities, and fostering children’s active participation.  

All these information was crucial to adapt our approach and produce the new manual. 

To present we have conducted research and we have collected evidence particularly for the age group 12 to 18. This includes the recent report we have published with results working with the Ministries of Education from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Kenya, Mauritius and Seychelles to integrate ethics education to contribute to intercultural and interfaith learning. However, we have a gap when it comes to data and evidence with the younger demographic and specifically with younger children engaged in our program from 6 to 11 (in the primary school age). We also have a gap in terms of geographical distribution, as we lack robust research about the benefits and outcomes of our program in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. We have collected stories from implementing partners, but our data for this age group at the moment is anecdotal and it has been collected ad hoc. We feel that we lack a robust and coherent research to show the evidence of our program that can help us leverage funding for systematic and long-term implementation that can help us measure impact on children.  This is why we are submitting this application. 

We believe it is the right time because of increasing inter-group tensions in societies, increasing bullying in schools reflected in xenophobia towards migrants and refugees, islamophobia and antisemitism, in particular, but also all kinds of discrimination against minority groups, which are rising. It is in the early years, and particularly in the middle years of life, when children are learning to build relationships and learning to make ethical decisions, that it is critical to provide them with learning opportunities to encounter the ‘other’, challenge their prejudices and stereotypes, and learn to empathize with those who are different.  Arigatou International is organizing its Sixth Forum of the Global Network of Religions for Children in November in Abu Dhabi, which will be an opportunity to mobilize members of the network in more than 80 countries as well as partners to address issues affecting children. One of the thematic areas will be education, and we believe this can be an opportunity to mobilise partners towards implementing the Learning to Live Together program with children.   

We also know there is momentum to work with education institutions as governments around the world have committed during the Transforming Education Summit to equip teachers with additional skills. 68% of all governments involved pledged to focus on rethinking curriculum content and pedagogical approaches, pointing to the central role of teachers and other teaching personnel; and most countries (94%) emphasized the need for pre- and in-service training of teachers and professional development as a key determinant to improving the quality of learning.  

• How does the Learning to Live Together and its focus on ethics education contribute to reduce violence and racial bullying with learners aged 6 to 11? How does the program contribute to behavioral change with the age group 6 to 11 that will also translate in positive outcomes and violence reduction in adulthood? 

• How does ethics education contribute to behavioural change and internalisation of ethical values in children that allow them to relate positively with others across differences? 

• How does the Learning to Live Together contribute to create safe learning environments and increase academic performance? 

As main output of the 12 week LEAP project we would like to produce a monitoring and evaluation framework and a set of tools that can measure the causation between ethics education and reduction of violence in schools related to racial and religious discrimination and bullying for this group of younger learners. Ideally, after the LEAP project we would be able to start in collaboration with our partners in the target countries a Monitoring and Evaluation Process to be carried out for six months and that will be able to produce evidence about the efficacy and effectiveness of our program. 

Our aim is threefold: 

1. we would like to understand how does the Learning to Live Together and its focus on ethics education contribute to reduce violence and racial bullying with learners aged 6 to 11, including looking at the causation between ethics education and reduction of violence in schools related to racial and religious discrimination and bullying for this group of younger learners 

2. How does the program contribute to behavioral change and internalization of ethical values with the age group 6 to 11 and to see if these changes support children in thinking critically and make ethical decisions, as well as support the development of positive relationships with people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds.  

3.We want to understand better the linkages between implementing the Learning to Live Together with the ethics education approach and its contribution to safe learning environments in schools and how it is related to an overall increase  in academic performance. 

As a medium size NGO for us it is essential to partner with expert organizations for the design of monitoring and evaluation tools, so that we can learn and that we can receive the advice of experts. This is why we would like to receive the support of the fellows for the design of the monitoring and evaluation framework as well as for the development of easy-to-use tools that can measure the benefits for teachers and learners alike. 

After the LEAP project, our plan is to conduct a robust monitoring and evaluation process in the target countries, starting from the school year 2024-2025. Ideally, we would like for teachers to implement the Learning to Live Together for 6 to 12 months in the classroom or in co-curricular activities. During this time, teachers implementing will use the tools that we have designed during the LEAP project. 

NOTE- we were not able to add references but we would like to point to some of the evidence that we cite in the application

 Megan Meier Foundation (2020). Bullying, Cyberbullying, & Suicide Statistics;  https://www.meganmeierfoundation.org/statistics 

 UNESCO (n.d.)  celebrates first international day against violence and bullying at school including cyberbullying | https://www.unesco.org/en/arti... 

https://www.unesco.org/en/arti... 

UNESCO. Behind the numbers: Ending school violence and bullying.  https://on.unesco.org/school-v... 

Arigatou International, 2014.  Systematic Implementation and Internal Monitoring and Evaluation of the Learning to Live Together Programme - A Report on an Internal Review Process of Programme Activities in 24 Locations in El Salvador, Greece, India, Kenya, and Romania.

In terms of long-term outcome, after testing the monitoring and evaluation framework and tools in the target countries for the LEAP project, we are hoping that we can apply the framework and the tools in 10 countries more where Arigatou International and its partners are working with children in the age group 6 to 11, namely: Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, Romania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, India and Sri Lanka. 

In addition, the evidence gathered thanks to the framework and the tools, will be leveraged and presented to prospective donors and partners so that we can expand the implementation of our product, particularly aiming to longer term implementation in selected countries that can allow us to understand impact on children.   

We will also understand if the program has gaps that need to be addressed (for example in terms of developing additional resources for teachers or in the Latin-American context). 

Overall, in terms of long terms outcome we are hoping to strengthen our approaches and to develop effective ways to measure and showcase the impact of our program.