The full program includes seven modules: Curiosity, Compassion, Inclusiveness, Self-empowerment, Perseverance, Forgiveness and Courage.
The Approach: Story > Creative Experience > Real-Life Leadership Experience
Each module in the program uses story to introduce important ideas. The characters are developing leadership skills, so the children can see and evaluate how someone else is doing it first. Then kids are prompted to imagine themselves in the story and how they might act (or react). The module then builds a bridge to real-life experience, starting with creative activities – such as nature hunts, drawing, acting, or experiments – to help give children practice identifying a leadership characteristic and learn how it feels to use it. This is a fun way to explore. For example, in the Curiosity module, the children participate in a taste test and conduct one independently. In the Perseverance module, kids are challenged to “find” perseverance in nature and then express what it looks like to persevere in nature – by creating a song, writing a poem or drawing pictures. As a child engages with the story and bridges from story to real-life, they gain confidence in their own leadership abilities. Finally, the child applies their experience to a real-life leadership project.
Leadership Project
Between the first two modules, Curiosity and Compassion,, children choose a special project to focus on. The project allows them to practice real-life leadership skills. Children are invited to choose something that helps them make a difference in their community, such as a food drive or cleaning up a park. By working on a tangible project, the child then continues to transition out of “story” mode in order to gain real life experience. The child is supported with materials, such as a draft project plan or sample flyers – to help them plan and execute the project. Each module builds upon the previous one. For example. the Compassion module includes tools to help the child think through how to engage others for help with the project – which leads to Inclusiveness. The Inclusiveness module includes simple project planning templates, which then leads to Self-empowerment as the child takes on the lead role for managing the project.