The Spanish Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with The Italian Club and Settebello Restaurant recently hosted a breakfast seminar with United Nations Women for Peace Prize awardee and former filmmaker Leslee Udwin.
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This was to promote Think Equal, the revolutionary program sweeping across the globe, including South Africa.
The educational program for three to six-year-old children teaches social and emotional learning both from a psycho-social and also a social justice view.
Udwin, the force behind the compelling film India’s Daughter, conceptualized Think Equal while working on the documentary.
The program aims to end discrimination by focusing on children in Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDs), where most brain development takes place.
“My interviews with the individuals who raped and murdered a medical graduate on a moving bus in Delhi showed me what happens when we allow entrenched socio-cultural programming to persist,” Udwin explained.
“It is this programming which makes it possible for GBV and other social evils to flourish.”
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This is a particularly relevant insight for South Africans, where it is believed that as many as 10 000 women and girls are raped every three months.
Udwin maintained that this cycle of violence and discriminatory mindset can be changed, by providing children during their brain-building years with skills and values that make them more emotionally intelligent, resilient, inclusive, and empathetic.
This also builds their self-confidence, self-awareness and critical thinking skills.
She has partnered with a team of 22 global experts, including educators, psychologists, and neuroscientists, to design Think Equal, and founded the initiative in 2016.
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Since then, it has impacted more than 282 000 children in over 25 countries, including South Africa.
Udwin shared, “The program is inexpensive as provided for by the Think Equal not-for-profit organisation, that the same amount of funding that pays for the incarceration of one violent offender, can prevent violence in 454 children.”
The initiative has been launched in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Western Cape.
She hopes to see it embraced in all nine provinces, acknowledging that collaboration between the private and government sectors is necessary if this is to take place.
Bedfordview residents and Ward 20 committee members, advocate Mona Naidoo and Vis Naidoo who attended the event, called for more ECD centres to get behind the campaign.
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“This is a dynamic and powerful way to address one of South Africa’s key challenges and in the process create heart-centred future generations and communities,” said Mona, a human behaviour specialist and an advocate for women and children empowerment.
Advocate Naidoo intends to pilot Think Equal in Ekurhuleni and will be reaching out to local ECD centres to support this campaign to empower children.
For enquiries, Mona may be reached at mona.naidoo.za@gmail.com or 084 817 2977.
