Childhood, Youth and Family Support

At the section’s fall 2024 conference, there was a forum on the topic and the people in this group are taking the initiative further and can work together with other interested colleagues.

The main topics in this field of work are summarized here

1. What is a happy childhood and how can we support a happy childhood development in the various contexts of trauma, climate insecurity and a media-heavy global world?
2. What are the urgent and evolving needs of children and families in our world today? – Point and circle and social inclusion.
3. What do family and home mean? How can we broaden our understanding of family beyond blood ties to support healthy child and family development?

The field of supporting and understanding child development is full of burning current issues, especially in the current times we live in. Through various anthroposophical professional perspectives working with children with special needs around the world, we would like to invite all those connected to this field on a joint exploration to deepen our understanding of how to deal with some of the most pressing issues in the field, such as such as: trying to understand the needs of children and families in our time, supporting child development in the context of trauma, the uncertainty of the external world and the influences of media and technology, building a healthy and supportive community in relation to the needs of today’s children, and more. We will try to address these questions through the guiding theme of “point and circle”, which refers to Rudolf Steiner’s supportive education meditation, which implies one of the fundamental principles for healing processes and the enigma of child and human development.

Regular online work with all interested colleagues is planned.

Initiative group:

Nancy Blanning (Denver/USA), Renata Heberton (Angelica Village, Denver/USA), Sagiv Levy (founding initiative in Jerusalem/Israel), Julia Niederstucke-Kutzner (in-clude child and youth welfare, Anthropoi Federal Association/Germany), Ryoko Saul (Camphill Beaver Run/USA)

Contact person for technical questions: Sagiv Levy (Hebr./EN): sagiv.lvy@gmail.com

The contact person in the leadership team of the Section is Sonja Zausch (DE/EN): sonja.zausch@goetheanum.ch