The trauma-informed school in India is flourishing. It currently provides educational care to 240 children from the campus and surrounding villages. New Back2Back India Director, Goldie Karnati, is already dreaming up ways to better connect with the families of each student and ways to grow the preschool program as well.
An initiative that has taken off recently at the school is virtue lessons. Back2Back staff, Tara Holman, writes weekly lessons on various virtues and meets with Milleen and Suma, social workers, who then teach the lessons to students with monthly themes. The first month’s theme was responsibility and each week, students learned something new about responsibility, how to show it, and why it’s important. The month of August has brought lessons on respect, and each month will bring a new virtue for the children to learn and illustrate in their everyday lives.
“Education in India is very traditional,” explained Tara. “But we wanted to use a little freedom with these lessons with the hope that a variety of activities and games will allow the children to learn new values they will take with them for life, far beyond their academic careers.” This is what holistic care and education in action looks like – children are prepared for academic endeavors and for contributing to their communities in healthy, honorable ways.