Sonipat City, India 22 August, 2019

60 youth from 27 countries underwent Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) to build their capacities on social and emotional learning at the 1st World Youth Conference on Kindness in New Delhi, India from 29 July to 22 August, 2019.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (UNESCO MGIEP) has partnered with Life University to build the capacities of youth organizations and universities on social and emotional learning  and to develop a self-directed learning version of  Compassionate Integrity Training  which will be rolled out as a large scale training of youth across the globe. 

 Group Activity to understand Systems and Interdependence

CIT is a multi-part training programme that cultivates basic human values as skills for increasing individual, social and environmental flourishing and was developed by the Life University’s  Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics.

The sixty youth were trained through online classes and culminated in an intensive three-day face-to-face workshop at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India by Marilyn Turkovich, Executive Director- Charter for Compassion, Thomas Flores- Fellow and Assistant Professor at Life University, and Shane O’Connor-Youth Trainer and consultant. 

The partnership between UNESCO MGIEP and Life University is expected to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 towards education for building peaceful and sustainable societies across the world by building capacities to comprehend the rising complexities through a deeper understanding of self, others, systems and interdependencies. 

The multi-part programme of Compassionate Integrity spreads across three modules and ten skills. It is a journey of progression from skills for self-cultivation to engaging in systems to understand the wicked and the complex problems plaguing the world community. The ten skills are:
  
1.    Calming Body and Mind
2.    Ethical Mindfulness 
3.    Emotional Awareness 
4.    Self-Compassion
5.    Impartiality and Common Humanity
6.    Forgiveness and Gratitude
7.    Empathic Concern
8.    Compassion
9.    Appreciating Interdependence
10.   Engaging with Discernment

 Participants of Compassionate Integrity Training                                                                                                

In addition to the 60 individual youth, UNESCO MGIEP supported the advanced training of 10 professional trainers as CIT Facilitators representing UNESCO MGIEP, O.P. Jindal Global  University, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences from 10 to 13 September 2019. 

Ms Deepika Joon, Youth Mobilizing Specialist at UNESCO MGIEP says that participants felt that compassionate integrity training happened to them at the right time in their life when they needed it the most. 

The repeated calls and reinforcements that CIT journey is a progress and not perfection creates a  strong sense of hope and empowerment. She further elaborates that CIT is a unique learning programme due to two features. 

Firstly, it is based on the concept of secular approach to universal ethics and not based on any religion or culture and secondly it connects the skills of self-cultivation to appreciating interdependence to understand the systems. The   secularized philosophy of ethics will develop the skills of youth to understand and comprehend inclusion and diversity from a unique perspective.

The partnership between UNESCO MGIEP and Life University was facilitated by the International Charter for Compassion, an important strategic partner, which facilitates the establishment of initiatives of compassionate cities and communities, working with local groups to design sustainable action plans towards the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

From Left to right
Zishaan Latif ( NGO  Aarushi) Deepika Joon( UNESCO MGIEP),  Tom Flores( Life University), Marilyn Turkovich ( Charter for Compassiona), Shane O’Connor (Youth trainer), Jo Cutler (University of Sussex)

It is hoped that the CIT skills will enable the youth delegates to implement community-wide activities to further train educators and mobilize their respective communities for long-lasting peace and sustainability leading to a stronger kindness movement across the globe. Compassionate Integrity Training will give big impetus to youth to achieve the humongous targets they have set out to achieve through the New Delhi Declaration of Kindness, one of the major conference outputs.

For further details, contact Deepika Joon, Youth Mobilizing Specialist at UNESCO MGIEP at d.joon@unesco.org

Training brochure can be accessed here - https://bit.ly/2XZD7S3