Life Long Learning Webinar Series, with Will Thomas

Our focus as an organisation is providing access to education for all children everywhere. The partners and teachers we work with are doing amazing work across the globe. We are trialling ways to share some of this learning so it’s available to an ever-widening audience. Introducing the Life Long Learning Webinar Series.

Our Life Long Learning Webinar Series starts on the 9th September with

A short introduction to Trauma-informed Practice with Will Thomas

We are living in the strangest of times, some of our coping mechanisms have been tested to the limits over the last few months. As educators, parents, students and just human beings, we have adjusted, mostly we have found our own rhythm and a new way of embracing life but what about the trauma brought about by COVID19?

How do we feel? Who do we talk to?

What is trauma?
Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. It does not discriminate and it is pervasive throughout the world. 

While there are no objective criteria to evaluate which events will cause post-trauma symptoms, circumstances typically involve the loss of control, betrayal, abuse of power, helplessness, pain, confusion and/or loss. The event need not rise to the level of war, natural disaster, nor personal assault to affect a person profoundly and alter their experiences. Traumatic situations that cause post-trauma symptoms vary quite dramatically from person to person. Indeed, it is very subjective and it is important to bear in mind that it is defined more by its response than its trigger.

During this time of the COVID19 pandemic one thing that we can be certain of is that trauma is affecting many people across the globe. Will Thomas with his experience of working in the UK and Internationally has put together some tips that may help us all to cope with these challenging times.

A short introduction to Trauma-informed Practice


Aimed primarily at practitioners who work with people who have experienced emotional trauma, this short introduction covers some of the basics and may also be of benefit to those dealing with personal trauma.


There has been a groundswell of understanding about how the human nervous system responds to abuse, neglect and traumatising experiences, in recent years. The result is a very strong evidence base for understanding how trauma is created and how it can be treated and supported. This short webinar will help you understand something of the nature of trauma, how it can be treated using somatic-psychotherapeutic approaches and what can practically be done in non-clinical settings to support people with trauma.


Register Here:


https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trauma-informed-coaching-life-long-learning-webinar-series-tickets-118660754511


At the Foundation we have been talking about ways in which we can support each other to cope with this everchanging environment and we have been sharing ideas with our colleagues, partners, parents and students too.


We think this is a timely and important webinar to start off our Life Long Learning Webinar Series and we hope you do too.


In the meantime, here are some articles we hope maybe of interest to you:


Eight ways to help children prepare


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/28/how-parents-can-prepare-their-children-for-going-back-to-school


Listening grandmothers



I recently followed up a BBC World Service programmme that a friend heard in the middle of the night on 'Listening grandmothers' - very interesting. A bit on the model of the Chinese 'Barefoot Doctor' but less medical, this is a means developed in Zimbabwe to help people with depression who have few alternative sources of help. Amid successive traumas, Zimbabwe's 16m people have only 12 psychiatrists. The scheme is called 'The Friendship Bench', is free, and involves some 400 grandmothers in talk therapy with depressed people. The therapy is 'rooted in evidence-based therapy but equally rooted in indigenous concepts'. Proved to be effective though a randomised controlled trial, the concept is translatable to other settings, and there are Friendship Benches in deprived areas of New York. If you are interested, here is an account of it:


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181015-how-one-bench-and-a-team-of-grandmothers-can-beat-depression


Cultivating Girls resilience by Dr Kathy Weston

Read the article on page 8 of the latest edition of Engage.


https://www.stevesinnottfoundation.org.uk/engage

The Steve Sinnott Foundation • September 3, 2020

In Harmony With Peace Concert

By Ann Beatty • June 1, 2026
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here