Blackwood-Meeks

When Amina Blackwood-Meeks went to the 2009 Living Values Education Community Meeting and Association of Living Values Education (ALIVE) General Assembly which started in England last Friday, she was on familiar territory, though she is still breaking new ground.

Blackwood-Meeks attended the conference, held at the Global Retreat Centre (GRC) in Oxfordshire, with Living Values Education national coordinator for Jamaica Sharon Parris-Chambers. Parris-Chambers told The Gleaner that "values education is a way of teaching the youth about themselves and the world at large, which incorporates universal values and a moral system that other nations ascribe to. It is not just what we would ascribe to in Jamaica".

She said Blackwood-Meeks fits in as "she has the unique experience of children as an icon for Jamaica". Adding that Blackwood-Meeks is a griot and cultural attaché, Parris-Chambers said, "We feel she could contribute to an international conference by bringing the value of this knowledge to international representatives from across the world."

Its Beginnings

Living Values began in 1996 at the United Nations when a group of 12 teachers devised a system in which their colleagues from around the world would pass on the benefits of their experiences to the youth. Among the values they decided on were love, peace, respect, cooperation, humility, freedom, unity and happiness.

The group of teachers put together modules for children aged three to seven years old, eight to 14 and young adults. Parris-Chambers said that the lessons are "experiential, based on the experience of others as well as others in the classroom".

The performing arts are involved, as the students are asked about their feelings if they are at home and have a particular experience with their families. They would then do a poem or a drama piece expressing their emotions.

Active in JA schools

This is not the first time Jamaica is participating in the Living Values conference and the pilot for the national programme is active in four schools in the western end of the island, where the teachers also use music as part of the interaction.

Parris-Chambers says that the values education programme actually trains the teachers how to inspire the students and get them to perform better.

"They (the students) learn to respect each other, to be quiet," she said, emphasising the programme's meditative aspect, where the participants sit quietly and focus on a problem. And at the 2009 Living Values Education Community Meeting and ALIVE General Assembly, which ends today, Parris-Chambers said Jamaica is going to learn "how others are coping with crime, violence, lack of self-esteem. Anything we are experiencing in Jamaica someone else is also experiencing elsewhere".

"Finding common goals to solve problems, that is what it is about," she said.