When love and peace enter the classroom, they enter into the child’s heart, too.

By Manuela Ongyera, Manager of the Life Skills Education and Counseling Program

Here in my home country in Uganda, we take the old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” literally. Because it is literal. Children need love from all different kinds of people to thrive.

A couple years ago, I created the newest Kibo program, Life Skills Education and Counseling. Kibo’s four other programs target adults, and while children are never excluded, I realized that we needed to be talking to children directly. Two of the topics we cover in the classroom are relationship skills and communication skills.

When we talk about relationship skills, we talk about the importance of love and appropriate expressions of love in different kinds of relationships, like parent-child, friend-friend, and husband-wife. For many children, it is their first time learning that love is a central theme of the Bible and the most important commandment, according to Jesus.

For many other children, it is their first time realizing their own worthiness of love. Some of the children with whom we work have never experienced real, meaningful love from their parents, siblings, or friends. It’s heartbreaking to hear their testimonies about this, but it is also so rewarding to educate the class and to counsel individual students. Watching the love of God dawn on a child’s face is magical. This is the work of Jesus.

But sadly, as you can imagine, many kids who grow up feeling unloved have a lot of personal challenges, especially when it comes to relating to others. That’s why we also teach students about peace through the communication part of our curriculum.

When we help students see and name aggressive, assertive, and passive communication styles, they are able to choose the best kind of communication style for any given situation. We give them the tools to choose peace without submitting to unloving people and endangering themselves. As followers of Jesus, we are called to lives of peace and harmony, not aggression. But we are equally called to protect ourselves and the innocent and to let God’s justice reign.

For example, many girls are taught to submit to the men in their life without exception. This endangers many girls if they are approached by a man who wants to rape or do other harm to them. We show them how they can assertively protect themselves without aggressively harming others. We empower them with their right to say “no,” to run away, and to report people who break the law. This is the work of Jesus.

It makes me feel so close to God to help students realize that they are worthy of love and that they are capable of loving. Telling people about the love of God, and speaking peace into kids who have lost hope — this is the work of Jesus.

This article was also published here by The Journey Church.