The ethics education intiative, launched by the Arigatou Foundation and its interfaith network GNRC, has been furthered, developed and monitored by the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children. 

The centerpiece of the initiative is a set of tools for youth leaders and teachers around the world, employing a new interfaith learning process to empower children and young people to develop a strong sense of ethics. It is designed to help the young to better understand and respect people from other cultures and religions and nurture a sense of global community. The kit provides tools for educators to develop innovative and critical thinking in their students, to nurture non-violent behaviors and to empower children to become agents of social change.

Through workshops involving students from different religious and cultural backgrounds wherever possible, the new ethics program seeks to help youth to empathize with others, encouraging greater individual and collective responsibility and fostering a spirit of reconciliation. It provides a vehicle for youth to encounter and examine values with their peers from different religious, cultural, and social backgrounds, and to apply what they learn to the real challenges of their daily lives. The teaching “toolkit” has been field-tested in a variety of settings around the world. The Learning to Live Together manual was developed in close cooperation with UNESCO and UNICEF.

The ethics education initiative is designed to enable children and young people to make an even stronger contribution to building a world that is truly fit for children. The initiative positions ethics education as an essential part of the child’s basic right to education articulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Arigatou Foundation has established an independent website for the ethics education initiative, where all the latest information is available.

The formation of the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children was first proposed in the GNRC Statement delivered by Rev. Takeyasu Miyamoto, President of the Arigatou Foundation, at the UN Special Session on Children in May 2002. Its first meeting was held in Tokyo in May 2005. The message adopted by the Council there is available here. The Interfaith Council is made up of a Council of international eminent persons in the field from around the world and a Committee of experts in interfaith relations, ethics, and education.

The vision, mission, strategies, guiding principles, role, function, etc., of the Interfaith Council are set out clearly in the Vision and Mission of the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children.

Full details on the background leading up to the establishment of the Interfaith Council and the rationale are available.