Have you ever seen a child having a meltdown in a grocery store and wanted to help the frazzled mom but didn't want to offend her? Have you watched parents struggle with unhappy toddlers in church and didn't help because you didn't know how?
The Wakanheza Project© provides free tools and suggestions to deal with situations like these and many others.
Wakanheza means child in Dakota, but literally translates to "sacred being."
Project developers describe the program as:
The Wakanheza Project is a community-wide effort that provides tools and strategies for creating welcoming environments. The Wakanheza Project helps individuals learn how to effectively respond to everyday, stressful situations between people and how to prevent the situations from happening in the first place.
The program has been implemented in locations like libraries, churches, government offices and the Minnesota Children's Museum, both in Minnesota and beyond. Its free materials help train people to effectively respond in every-day stressful situations between parents, children and families to help everyone involved.
One Minnesota Children's Museum employee said,
“I hate to say this, but when we first started this project, it was one of those things I did because my boss told me to. But as we started to integrate the principles into our work and our department, I saw the power of the program. The principles highlight everything we want our customer service to be–empathetic, non-judgmental and supportive. I have seen a definite culture change in our department in the years since we started this program.”
The project web site offers free posters, tips to create a family friendly environment, a booklet for schools, and links to articles with more information. You can watch "Lending a Hand...The Wakanheza Project©," which promises survival tips for parents and young people to help us all get through and thrive during the cold winter months. They also maintain a blog.
Most importantly, they offer their three steps for applying the project principles in public.
These steps (in PDF form) involve assessing yourself, assessing the situation and acting in the moment, with examples of what sort of actions may help. The project advises you to "look for a simple, helpful thing you can do to improve or deescalate the situation."
If organizations are interested in becoming a Wakanheza Project© site, the Minnesota Children's Museum offers information here and a toolkit here.
As it says in the Wakanheza Project© Principles:
The Wakanheza Project is built upon suspending judgment, rejoicing in culture, understanding the impacts of powerlessness and environment, and practicing respect and empathy in the moment. We cannot be sure what happened before, or what will happen next, but we can decide to positively help out in the moment.
(This article is updated from the original article with current links and information)
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