GHFP education, flourishing, inclusive and caring education, peacebuilding, report, wellbeing

An Online Symposium on Ethics Education for Learning to Live Together 22 to 23 November 2021

We live in an increasingly globalised world where children have many spaces for learning and collaboration, but also a world of increasing distrust and fear of the other. Today, more than ever, we need to recognize the role of education in building safer, equitable, and inclusive societies. 

Education needs to support children’s sound and holistic development, not only cognitive and physical but also social, emotional, and spiritual. By nurturing in children ethical values, such as empathy, respect, and responsibility, and life skills such as critical thinking and the ability to solve their differences with others, children can learn to live together with people of different cultures, religions, and beliefs. Ethics education can empower children to become global citizens and work together to build peaceful societies.

The Transforming Education symposium aimed to accelerate global action and support to prioritize ethics education as a critical aspect for societies to foster learning to live together, contributing to “building forward better”. Through a series of panel discussions and interactive workshops, participants have learned from the experience, insights, and expertise of diverse partners working at national, regional, and global levels. To enhance children’s meaningful participation, an advocacy session for children was held on the 23rd, inviting reflections on how ethics education might help to learn to live together; share recommendations and engage in dialogue with adult leaders.

The GHFP’s Scherto Gill spoke at the Panel on Research and Practice to Advance Knowledge on Ethics Education, and she highlighted the importance of applying an innovative conceptual framework for understanding ethics education which can serve as the basis to direct research interest and co-create knowledge.

Overall, the Symposium provided a platform for various stakeholders to share experiences on ethics education programmes and their contribution to peaceful societies and to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It also offered an invaluable opportunity to learn from good practices, programmes, and policies illustrated by governments and schools, with the participation of several Ministries of Education.

A critical result of the symposium has been to identify key benefits of integrating ethics education into national curricula and programmes, and put forth policy recommendations and concrete programmatic actions on integrating ethics education as a core tenet of equal and inclusive education for all children. Read the Full Report HERE.

GHFP report

Report 2016

Foreword to the 2016 Annual Report by Simon Xavier Guerrand-Hermès.

We see ourselves as a non-affiliated institution who will support holistic visions of human well-being from the spiritual to the societal in the areas of education, dialogue, and livelihood under the broad umbrella of peacefulness.
We have developed working conception of human-centred education, an education that respects the child or young person as such and which makes his or her development its primary content. Thanks to our partners, this year we have been able to develop a pre-pilot project in a state secondary school in Brighton, which is an important step towards a more complete implementation of a HCE programme. The publication of the Human Centred Education Handbook by Routledge is also a significant step in this direction. We have been able to develop a closer partnership with the China National Training Centre for Primary School Leaders, and to share our understanding with educational experts in Europe and Asia.
This doesn’t mean that the GHFP is only wedded to one conception of good education. We have supported several other kinds of educational projects around the world, including a Youth Camp in Kalimantan, Indonesia and refugee education in Lebanon.
In recent years mutual understanding has been an important focus for the GHFP. We maintain support for efforts to spread understanding of the transformation power of forgiveness, especially in post-conflict situations, through the Healing the Wounds of History project in Lebanon. However, we also recognise the need for different kinds of dialogue forums that can touch the heart of peoples’ lives, and open up a deeper recognition and appreciation of people quite different from oneself. This has become an urgent need concerning political ideologies. In this regard, we hope sincerely that our work in Hungary, which shows the transformational power of the sharing of life-histories, will be useful in other parts of the world. Because of the deep importance of understanding how different dialogue spaces can work, we continue to contribute and learn from international forums such as the UN Alliance of Civilizations and the Initiative of Change.

Furthermore, supporting inter-religious dialogues has always been an important part of our work. This is for two primary reasons. First, human spirituality is at the core of our mission because of its central importance to human well-being, to the ethical respect of others and to peacefulness. Second, this importance requires that the religious communities of the world understand each other better. For these reasons, we continue to be engaged with the activities of interfaith organizations such as the World Subud Association and initiatives such as that to create a Museum of World Religions in Birmingham.
The GHFP has a growing interest in the practical meanings of peacefulness for socio-economic institutions and for governance. In this regard, we are very happy to have been active in the Spirit of Humanity Forum, and to learn from our partners, their vision of how governance in practice can become forms of deep caring. It has been inspiring to see human values at work for instance in the governance of the city of Reykjavik.
Thank you very much to the trustees, officers and staff of the GHFP. It is my great pleasure to thank the partners of the GHFP and to extend a warm thank-you to all the organizations with whom we have collaborated this year.

Please review or download the 2016 Annual Report