It is this courage that allows us to continue growing and developing throughout our lives. When we know we have a safe place, a place where we feel like we belong, we can be brave. How thriving and risk-taking go hand in hand (and why risk-taking can be a good thing!) Turns out “the rest ” the feeling safe and having a sense of belonging, is often the most important bit!
In our 20 year, 40 country (so far!) experience, we’ve realised that people often focus on one aspect of thriving, i.e physical needs so food, shelter, medical care, and they overlook or minimise the rest. Costly in terms of finance but, more importantly, costly in terms of children’s lives and wellbeing. Why it’s important to understand what we mean by thriveĪt SFAC we often describe our work as “turning good intentions into good practice.” We recognise that most people working with and making decisions on behalf of children do so because they want those kids to thrive! This includes people who donate money to children’s charities like us… Here’s why we think it’s worth going deeper in our understanding of what it is to thrive: if we don’t really understand what it means to thrive or how children can thrive then we might start making some costly mistakes. Obviously, the aim is for everyone to be starting from the same foundation of security and belonging. Research has shown that having just one safe adult in a child’s life can improve their future outcomes even when the rest of life is chaos. It’s important to recognise that they’ve had to work extra hard to achieve what they have. You will see people thriving despite rights violations and without that sense of safety or belonging.
You have the right to live with a family who cares for you.Īrticle 15: You have the right to choose your own friends and join or set up groups as long as it isn’t harmful to others.Īll of these things, these rights contribute to our freedom to express ourselves, be who we are and to be connected with the rest of humanity. Here’s a few examples to get you started that I’ve taken from this child friendly poster version (this poster used to hang in my therapy room when I was a school psychologist in Australia).Īrticle 6: You have the right to be alive.Īrticle 11: You have the right to be protected from kidnapping.Īrticle 24: You have the right to the best health care possible, safe water to drink, nutritious food, a clean and safe environment, and information to help you stay well.Īrticle 9: You have the right to live with your parent(s) unless it is bad for you. If you have a look through the UNCRC (you can find it here - I recommend the summary version!) you’ll see most of the rights could fit under the categories of either safety or belonging. In the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rights are described as the “ foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” - the essential foundation for individuals and communities to thrive. This carefully thought out list details what every child needs to live a good life. In fact, technically it should be underpinning all care and protection of children in every country around the world, (except for the USA) because we are all signed up to it. This important convention underpins all of our work here at SFAC. Let’s begin by considering the UNCRC (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - a bit of a mouthful?!). (Verb) If you say someone thrives on a particular situation, you mean that they enjoy it or that they can deal with it very well, especially when other people find it unpleasant or difficult.”Ī great start… but what does that look like in practice?Ĭhild Rights as a Foundation for Thriving (Verb) If someone thrives they do well and are successful, healthy or strong.Ģ. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as: Turns out it’s not an easy thing to pin down! To kick things off we’re taking a deep dive into “thrive” (rhyming intentional!) Then, in a few weeks time we’ll be back here to explore what we mean by safe in more depth and the month after that we’ll be looking at the belong part of the equation. Each month we’ll be exploring an underlying aspect of our work, a bit about why we think it matters and what it might mean for you in your life or work.
#TO THRIVE MEANING SERIES#
Welcome to the first post in a new series for 2020.
#TO THRIVE MEANING PLUS#
“A place to be and feel safe plus somewhere to belong equals the best chance to thrive ”.
Over the last twelve months we’ve developed a little equation to help sum up our vision and our work: Safe + Belong = Thrive
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