Inspiring Virtues Globally

The Virtues Project offers strategies to help address significant challenges with hope rather than despair. The following are examples of ways the Virtues Project International Association's global projects are positively impacting communities: 

In Kakamega County, Kenya: 

• Virtues Project Facilitators work within the school community to provide meals, school supplies, and scholarships to orphans and vulnerable children. 
• Virtues Facilitators provide training and then work cooperatively with police, doctors, and local administrators to rescue children from abusive homes and to provide treatment. 
• A recent collaboration between Virtues Facilitators and an orthopedic specialist at Kijabe Mission Hospital enabled donors to fund life-saving surgery for a child suffering from gangrene. 
• Virtues Project Facilitators with knowledge of agricultural practices are working with groups to develop small-scale farming of vegetables, corn, and beans, which provide food security for local families and an income stream as part of their community development project.

In island communities of Fiji: 

• Virtues Project Peer Educators are providing outreach in response to the disastrous effects of widespread poverty, illicit drug use, unemployment, HIV, and mental health crises by sharing how the Five Strategies of the Virtues Project provide hope and direction. 
• Fijian teachers requested Virtue Project resources to tackle the problem of truancy. Children as young as six are refusing to attend school, and teachers are working to address this situation by implementing afterschool programs that incorporate the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project. In response to their request, Virtues Project Fiji is training 25 new facilitators to help with the demand for Virtues Project training and resources. 

In Tanzania: 

• Virtues Project Facilitators are working to advance the implementation of The Virtues Project program in schools as an alternative discipline model to replace Corporal Punishment of students.  
• Recognizing the importance of early childhood development, Virtues Project Facilitators are volunteering in Head Start programs while preparing to launch a new program to integrate Virtues-based education into the curricula. 

These are only a few examples of how your support of VPIA's mission to advance The Virtues Project positively impacts lives and communities. You are truly making a difference.

In communities across the globe, your gifts are helping The Five Strategies of the Virtues Project take hold and make a meaningful impact in the lives of children and families.

In rural Kenya, there is a groundswell of Virtues-infused schools and communities. Several hundred teachers have now received training in The Five Strategies, resulting in increased test scores, improved behavior, increased attendance and declining delinquency. Education officials in Kenya are taking notice and are encouraging efforts within schools to adopt the Five Strategies and the focus on Virtues as a means to cope with disciplinary problems while also increasing student and teacher engagement. Communities tied to these schools are developing creative ways to raise funds and support one another, centering their interactions around Virtues.

In Fiji, floods ravaged the countryside in recent months. Nonetheless, enthusiasm for the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project continues to build. Virtues Facilitators and Peer Educators made heroic efforts to connect with children and young people throughout the island nation, sometimes jumping in to provide assistance with flood evacuations and cleanup efforts. At a recent workshop, nearly 400 students attended a Virtues training session led by these amazing Peer Educators!

In the Cook Islands, the island of Aitutaki is experiencing a tsunami of virtues practices. In their retirement, TVP founders Linda and Dan are engaged as mental health and wellbeing volunteer-consultants, working toward integrated community development with both governmental and social service agencies. They are also being invited into the schools, starting with an elementary school and a pre-school where teachers are learning to replace their natural instinct to label students with acknowledgments of virtues when they see them. 

We look forward to sharing more success stories about more schools and communities adopting the Five Strategies of the Virtues Project and how they are making a difference in communities around the world.