Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Pikler play group

My best friend Lisl is my go to person for all things early child development.
For the last four or five years she has been telling all those around her about Emmi Pikler, a Hungarian paediatrician, and her infant education theories. She works in a nursery run along the guidelines of Pikler and has been doing a lot of course work alongside her job. It's a pleasure when you see her interacting with babies and toddlers, you won't find a more loving or patient person and to see her accompany conflicts is something you've never experienced before. (When I worked as a nanny, I was picking her brain on a regular basis)
Needless to say, I'm proud of her, have huge respect for her work and can't wait to see where it will take her.
On my day off last week I went along to the Pikler play group she runs. She had asked me to take photos of all mums and toddlers, but I was almost more excited to finally see her Pikler world in action :) You can find information on a horribly outdated website here, see a bit of material here or read about main guidelines here. There is a lot more material in German to be found here.
A couple days later we visited a toy maker/carpenter, the only one who makes Pikler work materials in Austria. If you're ever around the Attersee region, it's totally worth to pop in.
If you have a baby or toddler, I can only recommend to check out one of the play groups. All the mums at the group I visited were raving about their time there, as is my friend Claudia who has been taking Miss K to one in her area.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

modern day slavery

In days like these and the culture we live in it's easy to forget about others around the globe. We've become world class at looking away and I can't stand it!
Did you know that there are about 27 million slaves today? This is more than there ever were in history and makes me sick to think that this concept was abolished years and years ago but still continues to this day.
It may seem like a massive problem and what in the world could I do to make a difference?
Well I mentioned this before but the A21 campaign does phenomenal things in Europe(mostly Greece) to free girls out of the sex industry and place value upon them, begin a journey of restoration and equip them to start a new life. It's a beautiful thing and I couldn't champion them more.
Please have a read here and here for more information about slavery in the 21st century. We all can play a little part in destroying this absolutely horrifying industry.
27 million may seem a lot but they are made up of lots of ones. Every single one of them is worth fighting for! Every single one has a face, a name and a story to tell! Let's get educated and raise awareness!