When a child is born, the child is open, and I think that openness has to be kept and has
to be supported.
The Step by Step thesis was that the first six years have a disproportionate influence
on the rest of the life of people.
That you can’t create open societies and you can’t change issues around equity and
poverty in society unless you start investing in the youngest citizens.
At the beginning it was not easy.
During Soviet system, there was one opinion, there was one right answer.
Step by Step Program, it was totally different approach, totally different thinking.
Child-centered classrooms, classes oriented to the children.
Education that allows the child to develop full potential.
With the competences and capacities to think critically, to have their own minds.
To communicate with others, to respect others.
The very basic philosophy of our curriculum when we established it was one of creating
an inclusive environment.
Inclusion of children with disabilities, children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Children in the rural area and ethnic minorities.
People from Roma and Gypsy and Traveller communities.
The classrooms that we create reflect the communities that we build.
Actually living democratic values, not only learning about them theoretically, children
will be able to be active citizens in a democratic open society.
One of the biggest investments of the Open Society Foundations in Central Eastern Europe
has been in the development of an entire civil society sector across the region.
It grew into a network, which then very soon became a movement.
The International Step by Step Association is a regional network of early childhood professionals
that grew out of the nongovernmental organizations that were implementing the Step by Step Program.
We have members coming from 35 countries.
Our mission is about access equity in early childhood education systems.
Access to quality methodology, access to quality materials in education.
It’s a platform of professional development.
Self-assessment, self-reflection, pure learning.
Developing standards and best practice.
It was not that we just offer them methodology and asked them to implement, but we offer
training for the teachers, we offer site visits.
To support them through mentoring, through learning communities.
We will help them grow as professionals to feel better about themselves.
It’s beautiful because people feel empowered.
The parents are the primary educators.
Their involvement in the children’s education is really important.
By supporting families and connecting families and collaborating with them, that’s how
you really bring around a holistic environment for a child.
We try to create a demand among parents for quality services.
You can always bring people together if you invite them to talk about dreams that they
have for their kids.
First step is to build a trust among people who are working with children and people in
the community.
Whether they are parents in Roma communities or parents in rural or urban areas, the community
itself needs a shared vision about what’s best for their children.
So they can actually fight for their children’s rights.
Sometimes it’s not about one achievement or changing one policy, but making something
become part of the culture.
In the way teachers internalize the values, in the way we approach children and families.
Our classrooms in preschool and in primary, they’re like laboratories where children
are learning to experience democracy.
Children that had graduated the high school where we implemented Step by Step ideas, they
were more communicative—they were open.
Teachers who have been working with us since 2003, we consider them also as students.
And they’ve grown up, and they are now with the education department at the province level
or even at the minister of education.
As Europe becomes more united, the International Step by Step Association, which has its initial
footprint in Central Eastern Europe, is attracting members from all over Europe.
Children are citizens today.
They have the right to well-being, they have the right to education and happiness.
An education, that gives an impulse that continues throughout life.
And it starts in early childhood, and it starts, actually, with parents’ education.
It’s not good to just to have to say that education is a human right, and then you just
sort of leave it an aside, but you have to do something that—it has to be an action.