Landmark week for Partnership for Children

Twenty five key people involved in the development and delivery of Zippy's Friends around the world gathered in England last month for Partnership for Children's first international workshop.

Delegates came from Brazil, Denmark, India and Lithuania, as well as all the three districts of England where Zippy's Friends is running. There were also participants from Canada and Iceland, where the programme is due to be launched later this year.

The main aim of the workshop was to review the way in which teachers are trained to run Zippy's Friends, and Programme Manager Caroline Egar said everyone agreed that good training is very important.

'In many subjects, teachers need to tell children that their answers are right or wrong, but in Zippy's Friends there are no right or wrong answers. The programme's aim is to get children thinking of ways to cope with difficult situations and then to decide for themselves whether those ways are helpful. So, for teachers, the programme requires a different approach.'

The workshop considered how Zippy's Friends can be expanded, to help more children in more schools in more countries. Prof Katherine Weare of the University of Southampton, England, gave a presentation on the 'whole school approach' to improving mental and emotional wellbeing, and delegates shared many creative ideas on how to make Zippy's Friends more enjoyable and effective for their children. The best of these ideas will be online shortly, available to all teachers of Zippy's Friends around the world.

The workshop was held at Charney Manor, a 700-year-old Quaker retreat house near Oxford. Many of the discussions took place in small groups, in the manor's beautiful gardens.
Kalpana Joshi, Chris Bale and Tanya Paris

To coincide with the workshop and a meeting of trustees, a reception was held in Partnership for Children's home town of Kingston upon Thames, near London. In addition to trustees and international delegates, many supporters attended. Two of the international co-ordinators for Zippy's Friends - Tanya Paris from Brazil and Kalpana Joshi from Goa, India - spoke enthusiastically of how the programme had been successfully introduced in these two very different cultures.

Children taking part in Zippy's Friends around the world had been asked to draw or paint their self-portraits, and about 200 of them were displayed at the reception. A selection will soon appear on this website.

Director Chris Bale said: 'These few days have been a landmark for Partnership for Children. When we started the agency in January 2002, we dreamed of a day when Zippy's Friends would be running in many countries and we'd be able to bring people together from around the world, to share experiences, but we didn't imagine we'd be able to do it in just two and a half years.

Sue Ricketts (left) chatting to trustees Doro Marden (centre) and Ann Cottis
'Of course, when you bring everyone together like this, two things happen. Firstly, we all exchange ideas, and that's wonderful. But secondly, we come up with loads of ideas for what more we can do. As a result of the workshop, we've committed Partnership for Children to fourteen priorities for the rest of this year. It's a lot of work, but it's also very exciting to see things moving forward so strongly.'

GlaxoSmithKline covered the staff costs involved in organising the international workshop and also sponsored the reception. A grant from the Network for Social Change enabled all the international delegates to attend the workshop.