Korczak Center
Korczak Center
In November 2019, a center for the training of educational teams was inaugurated in the village in memory of Janusz Korczak and Stepa Wilchanska. It is a social and educational project which goal is to instill the humanistic – democratic – dialogic heritage in various social and educational platforms, for educators, parents, and children. The center hosts daily seminars, study days, staff training, preparation of delegations for a trip to Poland, groups from abroad, pre-military training courses, teacher training for soldiers and a school of life for parents.
The project aims to promote research for the development of heritage and its adaptation to education in the 21st century, to promote the rights of the child as expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1989, to run educational programs and events that emphasize the child as a person, as a young citizen in his country, to commemorate the people and their work and to document the developing action based on their approach, with the belief that implementing the educational approach they developed will lead to better education and society.
Activities for Adults and Young People
The center, which was officially opened on November 29, 2019, invites various activities on site for adults and young people.
Among our plans in the short term is to hold a 5-session workshop for young people and boarding school instructors under the title “In the living room with Korczak”. We also plan to train instructors from Hadassah Neurim and instructors from other boarding schools to be distributors and implementers of the educational path of Korchak and Stepa in the education spaces in Israel.
The place is used as a space lace for daily seminars, study days, staff training, preparation of shipments for a trip to Poland, hosting groups from abroad, pre-military training courses, training of soldier teachers and a parent education center (“School of Life”).
The cooperation with the Hadassah Neurim Youth Village is at the basis of our operation and the continued development of additional educational programs.
We started the activity as a center at the 9th international conference for Janusz Korczak’s legacy.
In November 2019, at Tel Aviv University we held the 9th International Conference on the Legacy of Janusz Korczak to mark the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to raise awareness of the issue of children’s rights while emphasizing their special needs as a young person in today’s society.
The conference under the title “School of Life in the 21st Century — Trends, Challenges and Initiatives in Education for a Culture of Rights in the Light of the Humanistic Thought of Janusz Korczak” brought together educators and therapists in various areas of the child’s life from 14 countries.
A total of about 300 participants participated in the conference, of which about 110 were lecturers from Israel and abroad.
Janusz Korczak raised a demand before the League of Nations back in 1923 that: “…[C}hildren and youth are one-third of humanity, childhood is one-third of life. The children will not be people in the course of time – they are already people. They deserve a third of the fruits of the earth and its treasures – and by virtue and not by grace. They deserve a third of the victories of man’s thought.” (The Religion of the Child, p. 249), this demand and his legacy formed the basis for the Convention on the Rights of the Child which was approved by the United Nations in 1989. The speakers at the conference dealt both directly and indirectly with the question of whether the Convention achieved its goals.
Before the conference, we asked young people to read one of Korczak’s books, “Yotm Heksem” – which is a kind of early Harry Potter, and to choose a topic from the book that speaks to them and illustrate it. With the help of the Anchory Network, we have published a notebook with the amazing illustrations of the students, accompanied by selected quotes from Korczak’s letters about children’s rights, as well as several sections from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
For more information, you can contact Batia-054-4648935
e-mail: korczak@neurim.org
