Learning citizenship values through education

T he quality time spent between older adults and young people has become rare, leading to a decrease in the interaction between the generations. Young people often do not understand the needs and abilities of older adults, and older adults often forget the positive emotional benefits of being around young children.

The project Anzjani U Tfal Ghal Xulxin, launched recently by Parliamentary Secretary for the Elderly and Community Care Helen D'Amato, was conceived with the aim of bridging this intergenerational gap.

The project also coincided with this year's European Year of Citizenship through Education. The aim was to launch a campaign to popularise and put into practice the education for democratic citizenship.

Children can learn about citizenship through various academic subjects like social studies, history and geography. However, one strand of citizenship education is community involvement which entails learning about and becoming involved in the life and concerns of the community, including being of service to the community.

The Anzjani U Tfal Ghal Xulxin project was conceived by Josephine Vassallo, education officer for democracy and values education, following a proposal earlier this year by Ms D'Amato to undertake a project encouraging children to take active part in the community.

Children aged 10 to 12 attending the Zurrieq, Tarxien/Sta Lucija and Birkirkara centres of Skolasajf, whose theme is It-Tfal - Cittadini b'Impenn with a focus on health, culture and the environment, have the opportunity to visit residents at St Vincent de Paul, accompanied by the coordinators of the respective centres.

Ms Vassallo explained: "The idea was for children to render a community service by visiting elderly citizens at their residence, keeping in mind that many of the residents do not receive regular visits from their families. Through this commitment, children learn about the citizenship values of unity, altruism and responsibility towards other members of the society. Elderly persons can reciprocate by teaching (the children) crafts, skills and traditions, and by sharing their experiences".

She said that originally the project was intended to be an after-school activity during the scholastic year, where children would choose to spend some of their free time doing community work. "We started focusing on an intergeneration project in connection with St Vincent de Paul Residence. The project had to be postponed due to the examination period. End of school was also approaching, which would have defeated the aim of helping children and elderly establish a bond. Instead the initiative was launched this summer as a pilot project on a smaller scale within Skolasajf over a period of two months."

Getting such a project started required a lot of planning. "The initiative was launched after a series of discussions with Skolasajf coordinators, the staff at St Vincent de Paul and the local councils, all of whom contributed in a positive way to the project. The councils, for example, are providing transport from the Skolasajf centres to St Vincent de Paul.

"Before taking a child to an elderly home, there needs to be a period of induction. Children can become emotionally attached very quickly. Furthermore, not every elderly person approves of or is in a position to receive visits by the young guests," Ms Vassallo said.

Saviour Saliba, executive coordinator of Skolasajf, said the project was in collaboration with a limited number of schools which were allocated a particular day each every week.

"The educational value derived from such a project is priceless. Children learn about values, culture and religion, not through books as they do at school, but through experiences reminisced by the elderly persons they visit," Mr Saliba said. The children are to keep a journal of their visits, writing about this experience, including who they met and what they learnt. They were also encouraged to draw pictures of what struck them most. In this way, the children would continue to put into practice their literacy skills even during the summer months.

The Anzjani U Tfal Ghal Xulxin project also encouraged the management of St Vincent de Paul Residence to host a fun games festival for Skolasajf children. Dr Ronald Fiorentino, medical superintendent at St Vincent de Paul, said that the residence's administration has long sought a means to bridge the gap between the residents and the rest of the community where they would have spent the best years of their lives.

"For several years numerous schools have visited the elderly but this was usually done on an ad hoc basis and revolved around the festivity periods of Easter and Christmas. The need to have a more structured and organised approach has long since been felt and once the opportunity arose we were quite eager to participate in this pilot project.

"The benefits of these intergenerational interactions are numerous. The older persons have passed through experiences which most of us can not even imagine - the hardship of war, military discipline, emigration, the progress of industrialisation, cultural changes, and numerous others. Although children can read about these experiences, hearing the same experiences from first-hand sources changes the perspective and also transmits the emotions involved.

"Children are also told about the way these older persons used to date and how they used to rear children, an experience, which given our changing societal values, seems odd and difficult to imagine.

However, it is not only the children who may benefit from these experiences; the older persons themselves felt a breath of fresh air from these innocent children at times looking bewildered at the events being described.

These children were able to instil a ray of hope and enjoyment in the lives of these older persons, some of whom miss the opportunity to talk to their nearest and dearest because of infrequent visits.

Hence, the benefits are also two-fold - the transmission of knowledge and experience from the older persons to the children and the comfort and pleasure of human contact from the children to the older persons," Dr Fiorentino explained.

"This pilot project has been a success in bridging the intergenerational gap and enriches the lives of both the older persons and the children through educational input as well as serving as reminescence therapy for the elderly," he concluded.

Lawrence Bonavia, departmental nursing manager at St Vincent de Paul, said the main advantages of this project are that both generations end up appreciating each other more. This is because they learn that all age groups have something they can pass on to each other. "One of the experiences most of our residents have gone through and talk about are related to the war."

The residents also explain to their younger audience about the games they used to play and the entertainment venues of the time. They also talk about food, clothing, and traditional crafts.

"The children are also given the opportunity to visit rooms that are allocated to couples where they can understand that elderly people living here still have a private life and space. They also visit residents who have pets, like cats, birds and fish, and others who grow plants," he said.

"Children react positively. They stage dancing, singing and poem reciting sessions, which are well appreciated by the residents who sometimes even join in! This makes the children aware of the elderly people's lifestyles, experiences and traditions, which can be forgotten unless they are documented and passed on from one generation to the next."

Skolasajf will come to an end with a Fieramaratona, a five-day fair held at Maria Regina Junior Lyceum, Blata l-Bajda, between August 31 and September 4. The fair will showcase the children's achievements through drawings, crafts, plays and photos. A special day of celebration marking the end of the Anzjan u Tfal Ghal Xulxin project, which will be held at the residence on September 2, will reunite the elderly residents with all the children who took part in the project.

"Teething problems are part and parcel of any pilot project. However, during the first phase of the project we received no complaints from either the parents, or the teachers or the children themselves," Mr Saliba said.

The outcome of the pilot project will help to take the project a step further and introduce it in schools through the Adopt A Ward Project, which is scheduled to commence in the next scholastic year.

"Although we will propose the project during the scholastic year, we do not plan to run it during school hours because the idea is for children to take up a community commitment in their free time," Ms Vassallo said.