A methodology to enabling 'Children as social citizens'

Following up on my last post, I have been thinking on how something like that can be made viral and how does one increase the probability of it succeeding?

The challenges parents will face to make their children socially aware is persistence, attention span of children, how to make it fun and interesting and follow thro'

Hence I was thinking this has a better chance if it can be done as a group activity ... and eventually grow it like a franchising model.

What does this mean?

Basically try to collect some like minded parents in your vicinity and explain to them the concept. Then decide a time each week ( call it a 'sunday club' for example) where the parents come with their kids and we run this like a organized program

we prepare a Goals and vision document , a rules document and then a list of what all can be done

i.e pick various areas we want to have lively discussion with our kids, on topics ranging on social issues awareness to environment to world affairs which affect the social fabric etc

Decide the means by which this can be delivered in the most interesting manner. The formats can be lectures , fun facts, movies, documentaries

Also decide how many and what kind of field trips can be undertaken so that the kids also get a feel of things and it does not remain a theory. This can be to NGO's, projects, nature trips etc

Its important that the core and target of anything we do needs to be creating interest and social awareness for our children. There are so many things we can do that unless we focus this can go all over the place

As this matures, the vision would be to create a structure and program which anyone can pick up and start a 'Sunday club'

The advantages of doing this for parents would be:

- Most like minded parents struggle with this issue on how to imbibe this awareness in their kids so that they can atleast have them as data points later to make conscious decisions
- This will be a nice way to spend productive time with your children
- The children will get a fun way to know this as they will be doing this with other kids
- This can be a very good way to get to know like minded people and the children can also make some good friends while learning a lot
- This can help us as parents learn and grow too as we will have to stretch our creativity to study, learn and impart ....

Abhijit
16th June 08